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AMPHORA 


/  should  scarcely  be  justified  in  calling  him  a  literary 
monomaniac.  But  it  is  true  that  Art  in  general,  and  the 
art  of  literature  in  particular  had  for  him  a  very  high 
significance  and  interest ;  and  he  was  always  ready  to 
defend  the  thesis  that,  all  the  arts  being  glorious,  the  lit- 
erary art  was  the  most  glorious  and  wonderful  of  all. 
He  reverenced  music,  but  he  was  firm  in  maintaining  that 
in  perfect  lyrical  poetry  there  is  the  subtlest  and  most 
beautiful  melody  in  the  world. 

ARTHUR    MACHEN. 


M  P  H  O  R  A 

A  COLLECTION  OF  PROSE 
AND  VERSE  CHOSEN  BY  THE 
EDITOR     OF    THE     BIBELOT 


PORTLAND  MAINE 

THOMAS  BIRD   MOSHER 

MDCCCCXII 


COPYRIGHT 

THOMAS    B   MOSHER 

I912 


VNPr 

r  ■   ■ 


TO  THE   MEMORY   OF    MY    DEAREST   FRIEND 
LEOPOLD    LOBSITZ 

"HE,  THE  MORE  FORTUNATE!    YEA,  HE  HATH  FINISH'DI 
FOR  HIM  THERE  IS  NO  LONGER  ANY  FUTURE, 

HIS  LIFE  IS  BRIGHT BRIGHT  WITHOUT   SPOT  IT  WAS, 

AND  CANNOT  CEASE  TO  BE.       NO  OMINOUS  HOUR 
KNOCKS  AT  HIS  DOOR  WITH  TIDINGS  OF  MISHAP. 
FAR  OFF  IS  HE,  ABOVE  DESIRE  AND  FEAR  ; 
NO  MORE  SUBMITTED  TO  THE  CHANGE  AND  CHANCE 
OF  THE  UNSTEADY  PLANETS.      O   'T  IS  WELL 
WITH   him!  " 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


IX 


PROEM 

FOREWORD xi 

AMPHORA     I 

INDEX  TO  AUTHORS 177 


PROEM 


HE  shape  of  the  jar  was  as  classi- 
cal as  that  of  many  a  vase  from 
the  antique.'  Antiquity,  indeed, 
'''  possessed  an  abundance  of  pre- 
cisely such  jars.  Furthermore,  when  you  held 
the  jar  in  the  sun,  a  spot  of  insufferable  radi- 
ance came  in  the  middle  of  its  cheek,  like  a 
very  laugh  of  light.  Then  it  contained  honey 
—  a  thing  which  strikes  the  dullest  imagina- 
tions with  a  sense  of  sweetness  and  the 
flowers  ;  and  in  addition  to  the  word  "  honey  " 
outside,   was   the    word    "Sicilian"  —  a   very 

musical  and  reminiscent  word 

We  propose,  as  from  so  many  different 
flowers,  to  furnish  our  Jar  of  Honey,  careless 
whether  the  flower  be  sweet  or  bitter,  provided 

I  Those  who  do  not  know  Leigh  Hunt's  A  Jar  of 
Honey  from  Mount  IJybla  should  make  haste  to  read 
it.  It  is  of  the  rare  sort  that  never  grows  old.  Pre- 
ferably the  earliest  edition  which  Richard  Doyle 
illustrated,  (1848),  is  the  one  to  seek  in  the  catalogue 
of  the  old  bookseller,  but  any  later  reissue  is  better 
than  none.  If  ever  there  was  a  book-a-bosom  this  is 
indisputably  that  blessed  volume  1 


X  PROEM 

the  result  (with  the  help  of  his  good-will)  be 
not  un-sweet  to  the  reader.  For  honey  itself  is 
not  gathered  from  sweet  flowers  only  ;  neither 
can  much  of  it  be  eaten  without  a  qualification 
of  its  dulcitude  with  some  plainer  food.  It 
can  hardly  be  supposed  to  be  as  sweet  to  the 
bees  themselves,  as  it  is  to  us.  Evil  is  so 
made  to  wait  upon  good  in  this  world  —  to 
quicken  it  by  alarm,  to  brighten  it  by  contrast, 
and  render  it  sympathetic  by  suffering  —  that 
although  there  is  quite  enough  superabundance 
of  it  to  incite  us  to  its  diminution  (Nature  her- 
self impelling  us  to  do  so),  yet  tears  have  their 
delight,  as  well  as  laughter ;  and  laughter  itself 
is  admonished  by  tears  and  pain  not  to  be  too 
excessive.  Laughter  has  occasioned  death  :  — 
tears  have  saved  more  than  life.  The  readers, 
therefore,  will  not  suppose  that  we  intend 
(supposing  even  that  we  were  able)  to  cloy 
them  with  sweets.  We  hope  that  they  will 
occasionally  look  very  grave  over  their  honey. 
We  should  not  be  disconcerted,  if  some  bright 
eyes  even  shed  tears  over  it. 

LEIGH    HUNT. 


FOREWORD 

HE  origin  of  this  book  can  be  set 
forth  with  becoming  brevity.  In 
a  sentimental  sense  it  might  be 
W  regarded  as  a  breviary  for  book- 
lovers.  For  over  twenty  years  I  have  had,  as 
publisher,  occasion  to  issue  catalogues,  and  as 
my  point  of  view  included  something  other  than 
the  mere  commercial  success  of  my  editions,  it 
seemed  in  keeping  with  an  ideal  of  what  con- 
stituted the  things  more  excellent,  that  I  should, 
wherever  space  permitted,  cite  such  poems  and 
prose  passages  of  unusual  truth  and  beauty 
as  appeared,  to  me  at  least,  in  harmony  with 
this  wider  outlook  concerning  Life  and  Liter- 
ature. It  was  also  well  to  avoid  repetition  of 
what  1  had  used  elsewhere,  and  to  have  little, 
if  any,  recourse  to  the  more  obvious  quotations, 
no  matter  how  famous  ;  preferably  seeking  out 
and  placing  before  you  some  of  the  lesser 
known  but  imperishable  utterances,  which 
earHer  gatherers   of   "  rose    leaves  when   the 


xii  FOREWORD 


rose  is  dead  "  had  never  found  or  had  never 
set  out  to  find. 

This  habit  of  enriching  my  catalogues  by 
utilizing  blank  pages  whenever  they  occurred, 
was  not  without  gratifying  results :  thus, 
many  requests  reached  me  that  at  some  suit- 
able time  I  would  bring  these  spolia  optima 
into  a  single  accessible  volume.  That  time, 
I  feel,  has  now  arrived  and  I  offer,  revised, 
and  decreased,  it  may  be,  but  also  augmented 
and,  so  to  speak,  re-integrated,  the  selections 
that  for  two  decades  have  given  my  annual 
List  of  Books  an  unique  position  in  the  minor 
world  of  catalogue  making.'  My  aim  has  been, 
and  is,  to  print  only  those  things  informed  by 
the  spirit  of  beauty  —  of  the  souls  of  books  — 
not  hackneyed,  by  reason  of  constant  use  or 
display.  If  the  book  has  any  demonstrable 
raison  d'itre  it  is  more  especially  that  I  have 

I  In  looking  over  some  of  the  more  recent  works 
that  have  appealed  to  me  I  find  The  Book  of  Peace 
made  by  Paitiela  Tennatit  (1900),  and  who  also,  as 
Lady  Glenconner,  edited  and  in  part  wrote  The  White 
Wallet  (1 9 1 2);  A  Book  of  Memory;  coTHpiled  by 
Katharine  Tynan,  (without  date,  a  wretched  omission 
its  publishers  should  be  ashamed  of)  ;  The  Book- 
Lovers  Anthology  edited  by  R.  M.  Leonard  (191 1). 


FOREWORD  xiii 

got  out  of  the  beaten  highway  and  wandered 
into  bypaths,  seeking  for  fine  flowers  of  the 
forest  rather  than  for  floral  displays  of  the  class- 
ical literary  garden.  No  editor  can  wholly  rid 
himself  of  clichks,  but  sentimentalisms  concern- 
ing "  a  book  in  a  shady  nook  "  mark  a  poverty 
of  spirit  that  should  not  find  and,  I  hope,  has 
not  found  an  abiding  place  in  this  compilation. 
If,  then,  Atnphora  please  the  palate  at  all,  it 
will  be  from  quality  rather  than  quantity  of  its 
contents.  It  is  a  blended  vintage  drawn  from 
many  sorts  of  literary  grapes,  but  it  is  my  own, 
and  I  can  only  trust  my  taste  will  be  shared 
by  others,  and  that  it  will  come  to  many  with 
a  refreshing  flavour, 

"  Jasting  of  Flora  and  the  country  green, 

Dance,  and  Provencal  song,  and  sttn-burnt  mirth  !  " 

Perhaps  it  will  not  at  once  be  seen  that 
Amphora  does  contain  such  immortal  vintage. 
It  had  been  easier,  and  of  no  great  value, 
methinks,  to  go  over  the  old  travelled  roads 
and  fling  together  a  vast  quantity  of  reading 
matter — and  nothing  more.  This  dry-as-dust 
method  shuts  out  a  wider  vision  for  the  finer 
spirit.     Far  otherwise  is  it,  if  the  appeal  is 


xiv  FOREWORD 

solely  and  sincerely  made  to  the  heart  of  man. 
Many  of  my  selections,  you  will,  therefore,  see 
have  nothing  to  do  with  books  merely  as 
aids  to  improvement.  But  there  is  scarcely  a 
quotation  that  does  not  deal  with  the  imagina- 
tion, or  that  is  not  suffused  with  Beauty  as  an 
everliving  rose  upon  the  rood  of  Time  ! 

The  sources  whence  this  material  has  been 
derived  aregiven  in  every  instance  when  known. 
The  fine  citation  from  Garth  Wilkinson,  for 
example,  is  one  that  even  an  industrious  book- 
maker might  be  pardoned  for  not  finding :  it 
was  a  happy  accident  that  I  came  across  it  in 
his  The  Human  Body  and  its  Connection  with 
Man,  (1851).  The  regrettable  custom  of  so 
many  English  periodicals  not  to  allow  a  poet 
to  sign  his  contribution,  is  still  kept  up, 
although  there  are  signs  that  such  owlishness 
has  begun  to  relax.  This  alone  is  responsible 
for  the  two  asterisks,  where  a  selection  is 
anonymous ;  a  single  asterisk  shows  that  the 
quotation  is  indeed  English  but  its  origin 
otherwise  unknown.  Three  stars  are  appended 
to  a  few  utterances  for  which  the  editor  is 
personally  responsible. 

A  merely  bookish  book  would  have  failed 


FOREWORD  XV 

to  satisfy  any  requirement  that  I  myself  felt 
personally.  My  title  is  fanciful  at  best ;  some- 
how it  was  the  only  one  I  found  that  pleased 
me.  If  it  does  not  contain  the  true  wine  of 
the  spirit  of  Love  and  of  Life,  it  is  a  vessel 
empty  of  all  meaning.  For  it  still  remains  the 
sweet  and  solemn  truth,  "  before  books  and 
after  books  is  the  human  soul " '  from  whence 
all  verse  and  prose,  all  art,  all  heavenly  beauty 
emanate,  which  will  survive  when  what  else 
there  was  of  dear  and  desirable  is  at  end,  and 
"  house  and  tenant  go  to  ground." 

Of  old,  amphorae  were  earthen  vessels  made 
by  the  potter's  art  to  contain  the  more  precious 
liquids  :  honey,  olive  oil,  wine.  The  jar  which 
Leigh  Hunt  so  exquisitely  imagined  as  filled 
with  honey  from  Mount  Hybla  must  have  been, 
it  seems  to  me,  a  diminutive  specimen  of  the 
amphora  family.  At  any  rate  the  idea  under- 
lying his  delightful  title  is  precisely  the  same 
that  I  had  in  mind  when  finally  choosing  this 

I  See  Optimos  by  my  friend,  Horace  Traubel,  (New 
York,  B.  W.  Huebsch,  1910,)  especially  the  section 
(pp.  131-162)  fronm  which  I  have  drawn  my  first  title, 
"  Before  Books  and  After  Books." 


xvi  FOREWORD 

antique  beautiful  word  for  the  sign  and  symbol 
of  a  vase  fulfilled  and  overflowing  with  wine 
of  spiritual  Life.  My  Amphora,  then,  O 
friends  whom  I  may  never  meet  nor  greet 
other  than  in  these  words,  is  not  a  cinerary 
urn  such  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  discovered, 
filled  with  ashes  of  forgotten  funeral  fires,  and 
so  wondrously  discoursed  upon  in  a  man- 
ner that  shall  outlast  his  unravished  relics  of 
some  lost  Roman  camp,  but  rather  a  vessel 
still  containing  in  unspoiled  solution  a  genuine 
and  generous  juice  of  the  most  high  Muses ! 

THOMAS    BIRD    MOSHER. 

September  ii,  19 12. 


AMPHORA 


Sing  some  old  exulting  sang 
Out  of  men's  souls  distilled  with  deathless  rhyme 
In  the  alembic  of  the  -world  and  time  — 
Triumphant  music  of  the  great  and  strong, 
IVho,  risen  from  the  dust,  have  swept  a  thousand  strings 
Vibrant  with  being ;  to  the  stars  arise 
Their  songs  of  passion  and  of  destinies  — 
Immortal  incense  out  of  mortal  things. 

* 


BEFORE  BOOKS  AND  AFTER  BOOKS" 

UPPOSE  you  heard  these  words  spoken 
for  the  first  time  : 

"  Do  not  weep  for  me, 
This  is  not  my  true  country, 
I  have  lived  banish'd  from  my  true  country, 
I  now  go  back  there, 
I  return  to  the  celestial  sphere  where  every  one  goes  in  his  turn." 

Would  you  not  say  that  such  an  utterance  revealed 
one  of  the  brightest  visions  ever  enshrined  in  that 
haunted  palace,  the  human  heart  ?  Well,  these  words 
Whitman  sought  out  for  himself  and  made  over  to 
us,  and  they  read  as  if  he  drew  his  inspiration  from 
the  depths  of  his  subliminal  soul.  Shall  we  affirm 
that  he  was  inspired  by  the  Bhagavad-Gita  —  ethics  of 
the  Master  drawn  from  an  older  source  than  the 
Hebrew  Bible  —  or  was  it  what  the  American  seer 
read  into  a  composite  text  derived  from  all  that  had 
gone  before  ?  And  would  you  call  this  a  lost  point  of 
view  ?  If  it  is,  then  my  scheme  of  things  has  an  insub- 
stantial value,  and  any  "  tidings  of  great  joy  "  I  thought 
inherent  in  the  selections  I  have  chosen  to  offer  is 
but  a  mirage  of  the  mind,  the  baseless  fabric  of  a 
vision  that  fades  and  leaves  no  trace. 

Now  it  appears  to  me,  this  7vas  the  thing  I  had 
most  deeply  at  heart !  It  voices  another  statement, 
that  "before  books  and  after  books  is  the  human 
soul."  As  Ruskin  said :  "  for  the  rest,  I  ate,  and 
drank,  and  slept,  loved,  and  hated,  like  another;  my 


AMPHORA 


life  was  as  the  vapour  and  is  not ;  but  this  I  saw  and 
knew  :  this,  if  anything  of  mine  is  worth  your  memory." 

At  times  I  may  have  unduly  insisted  upon  the  fact 
that  it  w'as  not  merely  a  commercial  adventure  with 
me,  but  the  possession  of  ideals  in  book-publishing, 
with  the  implication  that  what  I  did  was  for  a 
purpose  beyond  itself  :  "  seeing  finally  with  inexorable 
vision  the  way  that  life  comes  and  the  way  that  life 
goes  whatever  may  happen  with  words."  The  beauty 
that  endures  has  an  inherent  divine  right  even  if  the 
cryptic  saying  of  William  Butler  Yeats,  "  all  the  most 
valuable  things  are  useless,"  also  contains  a  truth  not 
easily  translatable  into  the  common  speech  of  every 
day.  Even  so  it  is  this  ever-living  rose  of  beauty  and  a 
still  older  ever-living  truth  underlying  life  which  must 
come  together  and  harmonize  whence,  out  of  the  dust 
and  decay  of  ages,  the  flower  of  human  hope  shall 
re-emerge,  transplanted  both  as  to  time  and  place, — 
imperishable  in  its  essence. 

It  is  moreover,  the  doctrine  of  Palingenesis  as 
expressed  by  Longfellow : 

"  There  was  an  old  belief  that  in  the  embers 
0£  all  things  their  primordial  form  exists, 

And  cunning  alchemists 
Could  re-create  the  rose  with  all  its  members 
From  its  own  ashes,  but  without  the  bloom, 

Without  the  lost  perfume." 

Above  and  beyond  this  belief  of  the  hermetic  philoso- 
phers the  persistence  of  the  lost  perfume  of  Literature 
remains  an  established  fact :  the  persistence  of  Love 
and  Life  being  co-eternal,  —  no  less  human  and  no.Iess 
divine ! 

But,  oh  !  how  many  things  crowd  upon  us  in  the 
evening  or  rather,  shall  I  say,  in  the  twilight  of  our 


AMPHORA 


days ;  and  how  little  time  we  have  to  work  out  the 
immanent  beauty  which  comes  at  the  close  and  not  at 
the  dawn  of  life!  Finally,  it  seems  to  me  that  all 
beauty  is  a  slow  evolution  of  this  submerged  self,  and 
while  some  at  the  very  start  have  had  The  Perfect 
Vision,  to  others,  indeed  to  most  of  us,  it  is  not 
permitted.  We  must  wait  and  are  fortunate  if  we  lay 
hold  upon  the  unfading  flower  which  produced  them 
all,  —  that  Protean  energy  —  the  hidden  Soul  of  Man. 
Therefore,  it  is  better  to  accept  these  shapes  and 
shadows  of  undying  realities  and  aspirations  and  leave 
you,  ...  to  your  own  interpretation  of  the  true  and 
permanent  in  literature.  .  .  .  And  "  as  a  great  verse 
out  of  casual  speech  "  is  "  forged  in  fire  "  so,  by  means 
of  these  citations  that  were  in  my  heart  and  should 
reach  other  hearts,  I  transmit  the  living  word  as  I 
have  received  it. 

"  So  many  ways,  yet  only  one  shall  find  : 
So  many  joys,  yet  only  one  .shall  bless  ; 

So  many  creeds,  yet  to  each  pilgrim  mind 
One  road  to  the  divine  forgetfulncss." 


THE  BELLS  OF  BATTERSEA 

ST.  MARTIN'S  bells  and  Bow  bells, 
O  they  ring  famously, 
But  have  you  heard  in  the  mist  of  night 
The  bells  of  Battersea  ? 

St.  Diinstan^s  and  St.  Clement  Danes', 
How  loud  they  clang  and  beat ! 

But  O,  the  bells  of  Battersea 
Are  twenty  times  more  sweet. 


AMPHORA 


The  meadows  and  the  trees  are  gone, 
IVhere  once  the  birds  did  sing, 

But  often  I  could  dream  them  there 
IVhen  the  old,  old  peals  do  ring. 

O,  they  are  like  the  village  bells 

In  the  place  where  I  was  born, 
IVhere  the  solemn  curfew  tolled  at  night, 

And  matins  waked  the  morn. 

And  here  afar  in  London  town, 

IVhere  manj>  things  ama^e, 
The  sweet  bells  ring  into  my  heart 

A  chime  of  other  days. 

St.  Martin's  bells  and  Bow  bells, 

O  thejf  ring  famously, 
But  have  you  heard  in  the  mist  of  night 

The  bells  of  Battersea  ? 

RUSSELL  ALEXANDER. 


TO  dig  into  the  roots  and  origin  of  the  great  poets 
is  like  digging  into  the  roots  of  an  oak  or  maple 
the  better  to  increase  your  appreciation  of  the  beauty 
of  the  tree.  There  stands  the  tree  in  all  its  summer 
glory.  Will  you  really  know  it  any  better  after  you 
have  laid  bare  every  root  and  rootlet .''  There  stand 
Homer,  Dante,  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare.  Read 
them,  give  yourself  to  them,  and  master  them  if  you 
are  man  enough. 

The  poets  are  not  to  be  analyzed ;  they  are  to  be 
enjoyed;  they  are  not  to  be  studied,  but  to  be  loved; 
they  are  not  for  knowledge,  but  for  culture  —  to 
enhance  our  appreciation  of  life  and  our  mastery  over 


AMPHORA 


its  elements.  All  the  mere  facts  about  a  poet's  work 
are  as  chaff  as  compared  with  the  appreciation  of  one 
line  or  fine  sentence.  Why  study  a  great  poet  at  all 
after  the  manner  of  the  dissecting  room  ?  Why  not 
rather  seek  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  his  living 
soul  and  to  feel  its  power  ? 

JOHN    BURROUGHS. 


i  T^OETRY  has  a  key  which  unlocks  some  more 
1  inward  cabinet  of  my  nature  than  is  accessible 
to  any  other  power.  I  cannot  explain  it  or  account 
for  it,  or  say  what  faculty  it  appeals  to.  The  chord 
which  vibrates  strongly  becomes  blurred  and  invisible 
in  proportion  to  the  intensity  of  its  impulse.  Often 
the  mere  rhyme,  the  cadence  and  sound  of  the  words, 
awaken  this  strange  feeling  in  me.     Not  only  do  all 

',  the  happy  associations  of  my  early  life,  that  before  lay 
scattered,  take  beautiful  shapes,  like  iron  dust  at  the 
approach  of  the  magnet ;  but  something  dim  and  vague 
beyond  these,  moves  itself  in  me  with  the  uncertain 
sound  of  a  far-off  sea. 

JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 


"  WHERE  THE  TREE  OF  LIFE  IS  BLOOMING  " 

WHERE  the  tree  of  life  is  blooming,  where  the  almond 
strikes  the  sky. 
Sun  and  spirit  closelj>  cleaving,  intermingled  sink  to 

rest. 
Sun  and  spirit  peace  receiving,  sleep  held  in  the  gloiving 
west  — 

Ob  !  to  wander,  you  and  I, 
Where  the  tree  of  life  is  blooming,  where  the  almond 
strikes  the  sky  ! 


8  AMPHORA 

Where  the  tree  of  life  is  strewing  rosy  snows  throughout 
the  land, 
Hearts  enstranged,  comprehending,  guided  by  Spring's 

healing  feet, 
Tears  pride  girded,  condescending,  souls  long  isolated 
meet  — 

Oh  !  to  wander  hand  in  hand 
Where  the  tree  of  life  is  strewing  rosy  snows  throughout 
the  land. 

Where  the  tree  of  life  is  blooming  on  a  foam-fringed, 
sea-bound  shore. 
Sun  and  spirit  quickened,  waking,  rush  together  great 

with  hope, 
Sun  and  spirit  bondage  breaking  crown  the  morn- 
besprinkled  slope  — 

Oh  !  to  wander  evermore 
Where  the  tree  of  life  is  blooming  by  a  foamf ringed, 
sea-bound  shore .' 

VIOLA  TAYLOR. 

IF  a  book  come  from  the  heart,  it  will  contrive  to 
reach  other  hearts  ;  all  art  and  author-craft  are 
of  small  account  to  that.  ...  In  Books  lies  the  soul 
of  the  whole  Past  Time  ;  the  articulate  audible  voice  of 
the  Past,  when  the  body  and  material  substance  of  it 
has  altogether  vanished  like  a  dream. 

THOMAS   CARLYLE. 


WE  are  as  much  informed  of  a  writer's  genius  by 
what  he  selects  as  by  what  he  originates.  We 
read  the  quotation  with  his  eyes,  and  find  a  new  and 
fervent  sense  ;  as  a  passage  from  one  of  the  poets, 


AMPHORA 


well  recited,  borrows  new  interest  from  the  rendering. 
As  the  journals  say,  "the  italics  are  ours."  The 
profit  of  books  is  according  to  the  sensibility  of  the 
reader.  The  profoundest  tliought  or  passion  sleeps  as 
in  a  mine,  until  an  equal  mind  and  heart  finds  and 
publishes  it. 

RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON. 


THE  sun  and  moon  and  stars  are  mine, 
The  greenwood  and  the  sea  ; 
Then  what  care  I  for  jewels  fine, 
Castle  or  barony  ? 

The  beaiitj)  of  the  waking  dajf, 

The  glory  of  the  eve. 
Are  they  not  more  than  rich  array. 

And  wherefore  should  I  grieve  ? 

A  sunset  cloud  shall  be  my  gown, 

A  star  shall  deck  my  hair, 
And  these  shall  last  when  dust  is  strown 

O'er  all  your  wealth  and  care. 


THREE  types  of  men  have  made  all  beautiful  things. 
Aristocracies  have  made  beautiful  manners,  be- 
cause their  place  in  the  world  puts  them  above  the 
fear  of  life,  and  the  countrymen  have  made  beautiful 
stories  and  beliefs,  because  they  have  nothing  to  lose 
and  so  do  not  fear,  and  the  artists  have  made  all  the 
rest,  because  Providence  has  filled  them  with  reckless- 
ness.    All  these  look  backward  to  a  long  tradition. 


AMPHORA 


for  being  without  fear,  they  have  held  to  whatever 
pleased  them.  The  others  being  always  anxious  have 
come  to  possess  little  that  is  good  in  itself,  and  are 
always  changing  from  thing  to  thing,  for  whatever 
they  do  or  have,  must  be  a  means  to  something  else, 
and  they  have  so  little  belief  that  anything  can  be  an 
end  in  itself,  that  they  cannot  understand  you  if  you 
say  "  All  the  most  valuable  things  are  useless." 
They  prefer  the  stalk  to  the  flower,  and  believe  that 
painting  and  jjoetry  exist  that  there  may  be  instruc- 
tion, and  love  that  there  may  be  children,  and  theatres, 
that  busy  men  may  rest,  and  holidays  that  busy  men 
may  go  on  being  busy.  At  all  times  they  fear  and 
even  hate  the  things  that  have  worth  in  themselves, 
for  that  worth  may  suddenly,  as  it  were  a  fire,  consume 
their  book  of  Life,  where  the  world  is  represented  by 
cyphers  and  sym.bols ;  and  before  all  else,  they  fear 
irreverent  joy  and  unserviceable  sorrow.  It  seems  to 
them,  that  those  who  have  been  freed  by  position,  by 
poverty,  or  by  the  traditions  of  Art,  have  something 
terrible  about  them,  a  light  that  is  unendurable  to 
eyesight.  They  complain  much  of  that  commandment 
that  we  can  do  almost  what  we  will,  if  we  do  it  gaily, 
and  think  that  freedom  is  but  a  trifling  with  the 
world. 

If  we  would  find  a  company  of  our  own  way  of 
thinking,  we  must  go  backward  to  turretted  walls,  to 
courts,  to  high  rocky  places,  to  little  walled  towns, 
to  jesters  like  that  jester  of  Charles  the  Fifth  who 
made  mirth  out  of  his  own  death  ;  to  the  Duke  Gui- 
dobaldo  in  his  sickness,  or  Duke  Frederick  in  his 
strength,  to  all  those  who  understood  that  life  is  not 
lived  at  all,  if  not  lived  for  contemplation  or  excite- 

^^^  ■  WILLIAM    BUTLER   YEATS. 


AMPHORA  II 

DESERnNGS 

THIS  ts  the  height  of  our  deserts  : 
A  little  pity  for  life's  hurts; 
A  little  rain,  a  little  sun, 
A  little  sleep  when  work  is  done. 

A  little  righteous  punishment. 
Less  for  our  deeds  than  their  intent ; 
A  little  pardon  now  and  then, 
Because  we  are  hut  struggling  men. 

A  little  light  to  show  the  way, 
A  little  guidance  when  we  stray  ; 
A  little  love  before  we  pass 
To  rest  beneath  the  kirkyard  grass. 

A  little  faith  in  days  of  change, 
IVhen  life  is  stark  and  bare  and  strange  ; 
A  solace  when  our  eyes  are  wet 
IVith  tears  of  longing  and  regret. 

True  it  is  that  we  cannot  claim 
Unmeasured  recompense  or  blame, 
Because  our  way  of  life  is  small : 
A  tittle  is  the  sum  of  all. 


11IAVE  caught  but  a  glimpse  of  the  great  vision, 
from  which  the  light  and  magic  died  before  it 
touched  the  printed  page ;  but  the  Procession  of 
Genius  exists  for  ever ;  it  is  one  that  we  may  summon 

at  our  will 

In  those  days  we  read  together  "  La  Bible  de  1' 
Humanite  "  and  drank  the  prose  of  Michelet  as  though 
it  were  a  sacred  wine.     Books,  then,  were  a  rich  elixir 


AMPHORA 


to  be  taken,  kneeling,  from  a  chalice  ;  whose  absorp- 
tion exalted  and  transformed  us,  in  a  vivifying  glow ; 
great  authors  were  divinities  to  imitate  and  worship ; 
and  literature  a  Holy  Communion  of  the  mind.  How 
different  to-day  is  our  attitude  towards  letters  1 
How  detached,  how  objective,  and  yet  how  far  more 
intimately  curious!  To  me,  at  least,  the  literature  of 
a  great  nation — in  its  vast  succession  and  continuity, 
as  it  passes  down  the  ages  —  appears  as  a  spectacle,  a 
progress,  a  pageant,  wherein  every  figure  is  not  only 
a  marvel  in  itself  but  the  embodiment  of  a  whole 
invisible  plexus  of  secret  influences,  ideas,  traditions, 
and  revolts.  How  like  us  appear  those  great  human 
beings  whose  experience  and  whose  gifts  have  made 
us  what  we  are;  and  yet  how  unlike  —  for,  if  the  pas- 
sions and  feelings  of  men  remain  almost  unaltered, 
their  ideas  and  their  ideals  change  with  every  age. 
Religion  is  everything  to  Fenelon,  Racine,  and  their 
contemporaries ;  Liberty  and  Science  attract  the 
genius  of  Voltaire  ;  while  to  the  Romantics,  as  to 
Faust,  "  Gefiihl  ist  Alles";  Nature  and  Truth  have 
their  worshippers ;  for  each  great  Ideal  in  turn  draws 
to  itself  the  tides  of  a  generation.  Yet,  in  all  this 
variety,  there  is  one  continuous  trend :  each  man 
begins  where  his  predecessor  stopped,  profits  by  his 
acquirements  and  carries  on  the  message  of  the  race. 

A.    MARY    F.    ROBINSON. 


T 


TELL  ME.  MAMORE 

ELL  iiie,  tell  me,  shall  I  ever 
from  the  wounds  of  love  recover  ? 


— Friend,  my  friend,  the  snow  dolh  never 
change  its  white  robe  for  another. 


AMPHORA  13 

— Thou  who  smtl^st  through  thy  tears, 
as  (he  sun  through  rain  appears  — 

—  Tell  me,  O  Mamore,  I  pray, 
must  I  Death's  command  ohej> .? 

— Dost  jest  my  friend?     Thou  know' st  it  well,  .  .  . 
we  all  in  Paradise  shall  dwell. 

— y4nd  O  Mamore,  what  wilt  thou  say 
to  Him  who  reigneth  there  alway .? 

— I'll  tell  Him  that  this  weary  earth 
to  heritage  of  woe  gives  birth. 

— And  O  Mamore,  dear  heart,  and  kind, 
in  Paradise  what  shall  we  find? 

— Harps  and  crowns  of  gold  are  there, 
and  scarves  of  woven  tissues  rare. 

— And  naught  beside,  Mamore,  Mamore,  .  .  . 
in  Paradise  is  there  no  more  ? 

—  Thine  Own  am  I,  —  and  e'en  above, 
in  Paradise,  we  'II  find  our  love. 

^  (Translated  from  the  French  of  Francis  Jainmes) 

A.    LENALIE. 

TO  the  beloved  and  deplored  memory  of  her  who 
was  the  inspirer,  and  in  part  the  author,  of 
all  that  is  best  in  my  writings  —  the  friend  and  wife 
whose  exalted  sense  of  truth  and  right  was  my  strong- 
est incitement,  and  whose  approbation  was  my  chief 
reward  —  I  dedicate  this  volume.  Like  all  that  I  have 
written  for  many  years,  it  belongs  as  much  to  her  as 
to  me ;  but  the  work  as  it  stands  has  had  in  a  very 
insufficient  degree,  the  inestimable  advantage  of  her 
revision;  some  of  the  most  important  portions  having 


14  AMPHORA 

been  reserved  for  a  more  careful  re-examination  which 
they  are  now  never  destined  to  receive.  Were  I  but 
capable  of  interpreting  to  the  world  one-half  the  great 
thoughts  and  noble  feelings  which  are  buried  in  her 
grave,  I  should  be  the  medium  of  a  greater  benefit  to 
it,  than  is  ever  likely  to  arise  from  anything  that  I  can 
write  unprompted  and  unassisted  by  her  all  but  unri- 
valled wisdom. 

JOHN    STUART   MILL. 


a  '~r*HE  /eaves  of  life  are  falling  one  hy  one''''  — 

1        The  woods  once  thick  and  green  are  brown  and 
sere  ; 
Andyoulh  with  all  her  bounteous  hours  is  done, 

And  age  is  here. 

"The  leaves  of  life  are  falling  one  bj'  one  "  — 

And  one  bjf  one  the  heavv  hours  fall  past. 
And  the  glad  hours  we  prayed  might  ne'er  be  gone. 

Are  gone  at  last. 

"  The  leaves  of  life  are  falling  one  by  one  " — 

Old  dreams,  old  friends,  xve  zvalch  them  fall  away  ; 
And  all  our  music  takes  a  minor  tone. 

Our  skies  grow  gray. 

"  The  leaves  of  life  are  falling  one  by  one  "  — 

Best,  worst,  loved,  hated,  happy  days  and  sad. 
Each  the  inevitable  course  has  run. 

The  present  had. 

"The  leaves  of  life  are  falling  one  by  one  "  — 

Till,  after  all  the  gladness  and  the  strife, 
IVe  see  the  redness  of  the  setting  sun 

Light  up  our  life. 


AMPHORA  15 


And  good  seems  not  so  good — ill  not  so  ill ; 

And  things  look  other  than  they  used  to  seem ; 
Ourselves  more  vague,  questions  of  fate  and  will 

Less  like  a  dream. 

And  then  7vhj>  leaves  should  fall  we  think  we  know, 

Because  the  autumn  comes  before  the  Spring — 
The  Eternal  Spring,  when  flowers  will  always  blow. 

Birds  always  sing. 

E.    NESBIT. 

IS  there  anything  so  delicious  as  the  first  exploration 
of  a  great  library  —  alone  —  unwatched  ?  You 
shut  the  heavy  door  behind  you  slowly,  reverently, 
lest  a  noise  should  jar  on  the  sleepers  of  the  shelves. 
For  as  the  Seven  Sleepers  of  Ephesus  were  dead  and 
yet  alive,  so  are  the  souls  of  the  authors  in  the  care  of 
their  ancient  leathern  binding.  You  walk  gently 
round  the  walls,  pausing  here  to  read  a  title,  there  to 
draw  out  a  tome  and  support  it  for  a  passing  glance  — 
half  in  your  arms,  half  against  the  shelf.  The  passing 
glance  lengthens  till  the  weight  becomes  too  great, 
and  with  a  sigh  you  replace  it,  and  move  again,  peer- 
ing up  at  those  titles  which  are  foreshortened  from 
the  elevation  of  the  shelf,  and  so  roam  from  folio  to 
octavo,  from  octavo  to  quarto,  till  at  last,  finding  a 
little  work  whose  value,  were  it  in  the  mart,  would  be 
more  than  its  weight  in  gold,  you  bear  it  to  the  low 
leather-covered  arm-chair  and  enjoy  it  at  your  ease. 
But  to  sip  the  full  pleasure  of  a  library  you  must  be 
alone,  and  you  must  take  the  books  yourself  from  the 
shelves.  A  man  to  read  must  read  alone.  He  may 
make  extracts,  he  may  7vo/-/c  at  books  in  company ; 
but  to  read,  to  absorb,  he  must  be  solitary. 

RICHARD   JEFFERIES. 


i6  AMPHORA 

BABYLON 
"  We  shall  meet  again  in  Babylon  " 

I'm  going  soft  If  all  mjy  years  in  wisdom  if  in  pain  — 
For,  oh,  the  music  stirs  mjy  blood  as  once  it  did  before, 
And  still  I  hear  in  Babylo)i,  in  Babylon,  in  Babylon, 
The  dancing  feet  in  Babylon,  of  those  who  took  my  floor. 

I'm  going  silent  all  my  years,  but  garnered  in  my  brain 
Is  that  swift  wit  thai  used  to  flash  and  cut  them  like  a 
sword — 
And  now  I  hear  in  Babylon,  in  Babylon,  in  Babylon, 
The  foolish  tongues  in  Babylon  of  those  who  took  my 
word. 

I'm  going  lonely  all  my  days,  who  was  the  first  to  crave 
The  second,  fierce,  unsteady  voice  that  struggled  to  speak 
free  — 

A>id  now  I  watch  in  Babylon,  in  Babylon,  in  Babylon, 
The  pallid  loves  in  Babylon  of  men  who  once  loved  me. 

I'm  sleeping  early  by  the  flame  as  one  content  and  grey, 
Bui,  oh,  I  dream  a  dream  of  dreams  beneath  a  winter 
moon, 

I  breathe  the  breath  of  Babylon,  of  Babylon,  of  Babylon^ 
The  scent  of  silks  in  Babylon  that  floated  to  a  tune. 

A  hand  of  years  has  flogged  me  out  —  an  exile's  fate  is 
mine. 
To  sit  with  mumbling  crones  and  still  a  heart  that  cries 
withyouth. 
But,  oh,  to  walk  in  Babylon,  in  Babylon,  in  Babylon, 
The  happy  streets  in  Babylon,  when  once  the  dream  was 
truth. 

VIOLA   TAYLOR. 


AMPHORA  17 

THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 

A    SENTIMENTAL    INTERLUDE 


Said  the  Star  to  the  Moth  :  — 

LOVE  is  of  the  Unattainable,  the  Unrealised.  That 
which  is  securely  won  we  criticise ;  and  when 
Criticism  is  born,  Love  dies.  Love  loves  the  Unknown. 
That  is  why  the  Moth  loves  the  Star,  the  Thinker 
loves  his  Ideal,  the  Hero  loves  the  Forlorn  Hope, 
the  Man  loves  the  Woman.  Not  a  woman,  but 
Woman. 

Selene  had  never  kissed  Endymion  nor  Endymion 
Selene.  She  bathed  him  in  her  beams  when  he  was 
sleeping,  but  when  he  awoke,  it  was  Helios  —  Apollo, 
the  God  of  Art  —  looking  at  him,  and  not  Selene. 
Apollo  —  the  God  of  Art  —  is  always  the  phantasm  of 
a  reality,  the  imitation  of  a  truth.  The  dream  is  a  fact ; 
the  sun-glare  is  the  symbol,  the  Maya,  the  Illusion. 

She  had  never  kissed  him  save  in  dreams,  nor  he 
her.  This  was  the  secret  of  her  mastery.  What  is  the 
history  of  Love  ?  Is  it  not  always  joy,  eagerness,  antic- 
ipation, in  the  earlier  chapters  ?  Pain  only  comes  in 
the  later  —  the  unutterable  pain  of  the  discovered,  the 
explored,  the  familiar. 

But  one  day,  she  kissed  him.  For  a  moment,  he  was 
transfigured  into  the  seventh  heaven.  And  then  his 
wings  failed  him.  He  knew  now.  The  dream  was 
over. 

Love  is  of  the  Unrealised,  the  Unexperienced.  To 
love  is  to  hope.     To  know  is  to  cease  to  love. 


i8  AMPHORA 


Said  the  Moth  to  the  Star  :  — 

LOVE  is  not  of  the  bleak  uplands.  It  belongs  to 
the  homestead.  It  is  the  warmth  of  encircling 
arms,  the  touch  of  tender  hands,  the  glance  of  appeal- 
ing eyes.  If  I  may  not  draw  my  love  to  my  side,  and 
know  that  she  irradiates  my  home,  then  I  must  seek 
her,  wherever  she  may  be,  even  though  I  dash  my 
head  against  the  cold  vault  of  Heaven.  Love  is  pres- 
ence, not  absence. 

Pygmalion  did  not  love  the  cold  marble ;  he  divined 
the  woman  in  the  statue  his  hands  had  formed.  Only 
when  Galatea  felt  the  inspiring  breath  of  Aphrodite 
and  grew  rosy  with  veritable  humanity  did  his  love 
bloom  like  a  flower,  and  surround  her  with  passionate 
leaves. 

If  Helen  never  went  to  Ilium  and  a  mere  ghost  of 
her  lured  the  Trojan  elders  to  their  ruin,  then  Paris 
was  no  lover ;  his  passion  was  only  affectation. 

We  only  love  what  we  know.  A  Goddess  we  wor- 
ship from  afar ;  we  put  her  on  a  pedestal ;  we  offer  her 
incense;  we  raise  to  her  our  hands  in  prayer  —  with 
bowed  head  and  on  our  knees.  But  worship  and  rev- 
erence are  not  love.  We  love  a  woman  —  a  sinful, 
erring,  inconsistent,  fitful,  illogical,  pitiful,  compassion- 
ate, forgiving,  very  human  woman.  Not  Woman,  but 
a  woman. 

Until  she  came  to  me  and  held  out  her  arms,  I  never 
thought  of  love.  Until  her  face  was  close  to  mine,  I 
never  realised  what  love  might  be.     Until  my  lips  met 


AMPHORA  19 


hers  in  the  kiss  that  sums  up  all  life,  I  never  knew 
what  love  was. 

That  is  why  if  she  be  not  mine,  she  is  nothing.  And 
if  I  attain  not  to  her  level,  I  am  nothing.  I  will  win 
her,  I  will  win  her,  though  my  body  be  lost  in  flame, 
and  my  perished  wings  flutter  down  the  unending 
night. 

W.    L.   COURTNEY. 


"  IVHEN  NIGHTFALL  COMES,  AND  DAY 
IS  DONE  " 

ORARE  divinity  of  Night  ! 
Season  of  undisturbed  delight : 
Glad  interspace  of  day  and  day  ! 
IVitboui,  an  world  of  winds  at  play : 
IVithin,  I  hear  what  dead  friends  say. 


Dream,  who  love  dreams !    forget  all  grief : 
Find,  in  sleep's  nothingness,  relief: 
Better  my  dreams  !    Dear  human  books, 
IVith  kindly  voices,  winning  looks  ! 
Enchatmt  me  with  your  spells  of  art, 
And  draw  me  homeward  to  your  heart : 
Till  weariness  and  things  unkind 
Seem  but  a  vain  and  passing  wind : 
Till  the  gray  morning  slowly  creep 
Upward,  and  rouse  the  birds  from  sleep. 

Then,  with  the  dawn  of  common  day, 
Rest  you  !     But  I,  upon  my  way, 
IVhat  the  fates  bring,  will  cheer  Her  do. 
In  days  not  yours,  through  thoughts  of  you  ! 

LIONEL  JOHNSON. 


20  AMPHORA 

WHAT  is  a  miracle  ?  We  define  it  as  a  phenome- 
non not  referable  to  any  general  law  or  repro- 
ducible by  any  process  explicable  to  the  reason,  but 
appearing  to  depend  on  some  mystic  effluence  from  a 
particular  personality,  human  or  divine.  But  true 
poetry  is  precisely  such  a  phenomenon.  It  may  be 
the  simplest  thing  in  the  world,  yet  not  all  the  world 
can  compass  it  save  one  particular  man ;  and  he  can- 
not tell  you  how  he  does  it,  or,  for  all  the  wealth  in 
the  world,  teach  any  one  else  the  secret.  Take,  for 
instance,  such  a  mere  versicle  as  this  : 

Row  us  out  from  Desenzano,  to  your  Sirmione  row  ! 
So  they  rowed,  and  there  we  landed  —  "  O  venusta  Sirmio  !  " 
There  to  me  througli  all  the  groves  of  olive  in  the  summer  glow, 
There  beneath  the  Roman  ruin  where  the  purple  flowers  grow, 
Came  that  "  Ave  atque  Vale  "  of  the  Poet's  hopeless  woe, 
Tenderest  of  Roman  poets  nineteen  hundred  years  ago, 
"  Frate?  Ave  atque  Vale"  —  as  we  wandered  to  and  fro. 
Gazing  at  the  Lydian  laughter  of  the  Garda  Lake  below 
Sweet  Catullus's  all-but-island,  olive-silvery  Sirmio. 

There  is  here  no  thought,  no  wit,  no  wisdom,  no  pas- 
sion, no  drama,  nothing  that  can  even  be  called 
description.  There  is  not  a  word,  except  the  two  or 
three  words  of  Latin,  which  a  child  of  seven  would 
not  understand.  All  the  writer  says  is,  "  We  rowed  to 
a  certain  place  and  a  certain  Latin  phrase  ran  in  my 
head."  But  because  the  writer  happens  to  be  Tenny- 
son, he  creates  out  of  this  nothing  an  ineffably  beauti- 
ful, immortal  something,  an  "  unearned  increment "  of 
beauty  to  the  EngHsh  tongue,  a  miracle  —  in  short,  a 

poem Tennyson's  lines  are   not  in  the  least 

clever.  So  far  as  their  substance  is  concerned,  they 
might  have  been  written  by  a  man  of  the  scantiest 
intelligence.     They  are  magical,  that  is  all ;  and  the 


AMPHORA  21 

abracadabra  which  summoned  them  out  of  nothingness 
passed  away  with  the  magician, 

When  that  which  drew  from  out  the  boundless  deep 
Turned  again  home. 

WILLIAM    ARCHER. 


A  CONCLUSION 

IF  all  the  dream-like  things  are  vain, 
If  all  the  strange  delight  and  pain 

Of  love  and  beauty  cannot  be 

The  heirs  of  immortality, — 
Then  shall  I  worship  all  the  more 
Those  images  I  now  adore. 

If  all  things  perish,  it  were  best 

To  die  with  beauty,  —  lie  at  rest 
In  her  great  drift  of  ruined  roses, 
IVith  lovely  songs  to  have  our  closes,  — 

Yea,  as  on  some  transcendent  pyre 

Of  sandalwood,  to  pass  in  fire 
Mid  broken  alabaster,  whence 
/irise  great  clouds  of  frankincense, 

Carved  ivory  and  sard,  and  robes 

Of  purple  dye,  and  magic  globes 
Of  burning  crystal,  scattered  gems 
Like  flowers,  and  holy  diadems. 

Papyrus  writ  with  perfect  rimes, 

And  lutes  fulfilled  of  tender  chimes, 
And  lucid  cups  all  scriptured  round 
With  slim  white  dancing  gods  vine-bound. 

And  agate  lamps,  whence  tongues  of  light 

Flare  out  into  the  endless  night. 

RACHEL   ANNAND   TAYLOR. 


22  AMPHORA 

THERE  is  a  beautiful  old  story  of  a  saint  who  saw 
in  a  vision  a  shining  figure  approaching  him, 
holding  in  his  hand  a  dark  and  cloudy  globe.  He  held 
it  out,  and  the  saint  looking  attentively  upon  it,  saw 
that  it  appeared  to  represent  the  earth  in  miniature ; 
there  were  the  continents  and  seas,  with  clouds  sweep- 
ing over  them  ;  and,  for  all  that  it  was  so  minute,  he 
could  see  cities  and  plains,  and  little  figures  moving  to 
and  fro.  The  angel  laid  his  finger  on  a  part  of  the 
globe,  and  detached  from  it  a  small  cluster  of  islands, 
drawing  them  out  of  the  sea;  and  the  saint  saw  that 
they  were  peopled  by  a  folk,  whom  he  knew,  in  some 
way  that  he  could  not  wholly  understand,  to  be  dreary 
and  uncomforted.  He  heard  a  voice  saying,  "i% 
taketh  7ip  the  isles  as  a  very  small  thing  ;  "  and  it  darted 
into  his  mind  that  his  work  lay  with  the  people  of 
those  sad  islands ;  that  he  was  to  go  thither,  and 
speak  to  them  a  message  of  hope. 

It  is  a  beautiful  story ;  and  it  has  always  seemed  to 
me  that  the  work  of  the  artist  is  like  that.  He  is  to 
detach  from  the  great  peopled  globe  what  little  por- 
tion seems  to  appeal  to  him  most;  and  he  must  then 
sav  what  he  can  to  encourage  and  sustain  men,  what- 
ever thoughts  of  joy  and  hope  come  most  home  to 
him  in  his  long  and  eager  pilgrimage. 

E.   F.    BENSON. 


MA  NDRAGORA 

POUR  me  red  wine  from  out  the  Venice  flask. 
Pour  faster,  faster  yet ! 
The  joy  of  ruby  thought  I  do  not  ask, 
Bid  me  forget! 


AMPHORA  23 

Breathe  slumbrous  music  round  me,  sweet  and  slow, 

To  honied  phrases  set ! 
Into  the  land  of  dreams  I  long  to  go. 

Bid  me  forget ! 

Lay  not  the  rose's  bloom  against  mj>  cheek, 

IVith  chill  tears  she  is  wet. 
The  wrinkled  poppy  is  the/lower  I  seek. 

Bid  me  forget ! 

Where  is  delight  ?  and  what  are  pleasures  now  ?  — 

Moths  that  a  garment  fret. 
The  world  is  turned  memorial,  crying,  "Thou 

Shalt  not  forget  /" 

MARY    E.    COLf:RIDGE. 


THE  Roman  empire  perished,  it  has  been  said,  for 
want  of  men  ;  Greek  literature  perished  for  want 
of  anything  to  say ;  or  rather,  because  it  found 
nothing  in  the  end  worth  saying.  Its  end  was  like 
that  recorded  of  the  noblest  of  the  Roman  emperors ; 
the  last  word  uttered  with  its  dying  breath  was  the 
counsel  of  equanimity.  .  .  .  Resignation  was  the  one 
lesson  left  to  ancient  literature,  and  this  lesson  once 
fully  learned,  it  naturally  and  silently  died.  .  .  .  All 
know  how  the  ages  that  followed  were  too  preoccupied 
to  think  of  writing  its  epitaph.  .  .  .  Filtered  down 
through  Byzantine  epitomes,  through  Arabic  trans- 
lations, through  every  sort  of  strange  and  tortuous 
channel,  a  vague  and  distorted  tradition  of  this  great 
literature  just  survived  long  enough  to  kindle  the 
imagination  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The  chance  of 
history,  fortunate  perhaps  for  the  world,  swept  the 
last  Greek  scholars  away  from  Constantinople  to  the 


24  AMPHORA 

living  soil  of  Italy,  carrying  with  them  the  priceless 
relics  of  forgotten  splendours.  To  some  broken  stones, 
and  to  the  chance  which  saved  a  few  hundred  manu- 
scripts from  destruction,  is  due  such  knowledge  as  we 
have  to-day  of  that  Greek  thought  and  life  which  still 
remains  to  us  in  many  ways  an  unapproached  ideal. 

J.   W.    MACKAIL. 

TWH  HOUSE  OF  C/ESAR 
"  The  Feast  is  over  and  the  lamps  expire" 

YEA  —  we  have  thought  of  royal  robes  and  red, 
Had  purple  dreams  of  words  we  uttered, 
Have  lived  once  more  the  moment  in  the  brain 
That  stirred  the  multitude  to  shout  again. 
/Ill  done,  all  fled,  and  now  wc  faint  and  tire- 
The  Feast  is  over  and  the  lamps  expire. 

Yea  —  we  have  launched  a  ship  on  sapphire  seas, 
And  felt  the  steed  between  the  gripping  knees  ; 
Have  breathed  the  evening  when  the^  huntsman  brought 
The  stiffening  trophy  of  the  fevered  sport  — 
Have  crouched  by  rivers  in  the  grassy  meads 
To  watch  for  fish  that  dart  amongst  the  weeds. 
All  well,  all  good — so  hale  from  sun  and  mire. 
The  Feast  is  over  and  the  lamps  expire. 

Yet  —  we  have  thought  of  Love  as  men  may  think, 

IVho  drain  a  cup  because  they  needs  must  drink  ; 

Have  brought  a  jewel  from  beyond  the  seas 

To  star  a  crown  of  blue  anemones. 

All  fled,  all  done  —  a  Ccesar's  brief  desire. 

The  Feast  is  over  and  the  lamps  expire. 


AMPHORA 


25 


Yea  —  and  what  is  there  that  we  have  not  done, 
The  Gods  provided  us  'twixt  sun  and  sun  ? 
Have  we  not  watched  a  hundred  legions  thinned, 
y4nd  crushed  and  conquered,  succoured  and  sinned  ? 
Lo  —  we  who  moved  the  loftj>  gods  to  ire. 
The  Feast  is  over  and  the  lamps  expire. 

Yea  —  and  what  voice  shall  reach  us  and  shall  give 
Our  earthly  self  a  moment  more  to  live  ? 
IVhat  arm  shall  fold  us  and  shall  come  between 
Our  failing  body  and  the  grasses  green  ? 
And  the  last  heart  that  beats  beneath  this  head. 
Shall  it  be  heard  or  unremembered  ? 
All  dim,  all  pale  ;  so  lift  me  on  the  pyre. 
The  Feast  is  over  and  the  lamps  expire. 

VIOLA   TAYLOR. 


OUR  lives  must  be  spent  seeking  our  God,  for  Cod 
hides;  but  his  artifices,  once  they  be  known, 
seem  so  simple  and  smiling!  From  that  moment  the 
merest  nothing  reveals  his  presence,  and  the  greatness 
of  our  lives  depends  on  so  little.  Even  thus  may  the 
verse  of  a  poet,  in  the  midst  of  the  humble  incidents 
of  ordinary  days,  suddenly  reveal  to  us  something  that 
is  stupendous.    No  solemn  word  has  been  pronounced, 

and  yet why  does  a  vast  night,  starred  with 

angels,  extend  over  the  smile  of  a  child,  and  why, 
around  a  yes  or  no,  murmured  by  a  soul  that  sings 
and  busies  itself  with  other  matters,  do  we  suddenly 
hold  our  breath  for  an  instant  and  say  to  ourselves, 
"Here  is  the  house  of  God,  and  this  is  one  of  the 
approaches  lo  Heaven  ?  " 

MAURICE    MAETERLINCK. 


26  AMPHORA 

SECOND  BEST 

HERE  t;i  the  dark,  O  heart ; 
Alone  with  the  enduring  Earth,  and  Night, 
And  Silence,  and  the  warm  strange  smell  of  clover  ; 
Clear-visioned,  though  it  break  j^ou  ;  far  apart 
From  the  dead  best,  the  dear  and  old  delight ; 
Throw  down  jour  dreams  of  immortality, 
O  faithful,  O  foolish  lover  ! 
Here's  peace  for  you,  and  surety ;  here  the  one 
Wisdom  —  the  truth  !  —  "All  day  the  good  glad  sun 
Showers  love  and  labour  onyou,  wine  and  song. 
The  greenwood  laughs,  the  wind  blows,  all  day  long 
Till  night.''     And  night  ends  all  things. 

Then  shall  be 
No  lamp  relumed  in  heaven,  no  voices  crying. 
Or  changing  lights,  or  dreams  and  forms  that  hover  ! 
(And,  heart,  for  all  your  sighing, 
That  gladness  and  those  tears  are  over,  over.  ■  .  .) 

And  has  the  truth  brought  no  new  hope  at  all, 
Heart,  that  you  're  weeping  yet  for  Paradise? 
Do  they  still  whisper,  the  old,  weary  cries  ? 
"  Mid  youth  and  song,  feasting  and  carnival, 
Through  laughter,  through  the  roses,  as  of  old 
Comes  Death,  on  shadowy  and  relentless  feet, 
Death,  unappeasable  by  prayer  or  gold  : 
Death  is  the  end,  the  end  !  " 
Proud  then,  clear -eyed  and  laughing,  go  to  greet 
Death  as  a  friend  ! 

Exile  of  immortality,  strongly  wise, 
Strain  through  the  dark  with  undesiroiis  eyes 
To  what  may  lie  beyond  it.     Sets  your  star, 
O  heart,  for  ever  !     Yet,  behind  the  Night, 


AMPHORA  27 

IVaits/or  the  great  unborn,  somewhere  afar, 
Some  white,  tremendous  daybreak.     /Ind  the  light. 
Returning,  shall  give  back  the  golden  hours, 
Ocean  a  windless  level.  Earth  a  lawn 
Spacious  and  full  of  sunlit  dancing-places, 
And  laughter,  and  music,  and,  among  the  flowers, 
The  gay  child-hearts  of  men,  and  the  child-faces, 
O  heart,  in  the  great  dawn  ! 

RUPERT   BROOKE. 


To  the  pure  spirit  of  my  sister  Henrietta,  who  died 
at  Byblus,  September  24,  1861. 

IN  the  bosom  of  God,  where  thou  reposest,  dost 
tliou  remember  those  long  days  at  Ghazir,  when, 
alone  with  thee,  I  wrote  these  pages,  inspired  by  the 
places  which  we  visited  together?  Sitting  silently 
beside  me,  thou  didst  read  each  sheet  and  copy  it  as 
soon  as  written,  — at  our  feet,  meanwhile,  the  sea,  the 
villages,  ravines  and  mountains  lay  unfolded.  When 
the  dazzling  light  had  yielded  to  the  countless  host  of 
stars,  thy  keen  and  subtle  questions,  thy  discreet 
doubts,  brought  me  back  to  the  sublime  object  of  our 
common  thought.  Thou  saidst  to  me  one  day  that 
thou  wouldst  love  this  book,  first,  because  it  was  writ- 
ten in  thy  presence,  and,  also,  because  it  was  after 
thine  own  heart.  If,  at  times,  thou  wast  troubled, 
fearing  for  it  the  narrow  censure  of  shallow  men,  yet 
wast  thou  ever  persuaded  that  truly  religious  souls 
would  delight  therein  at  last. 

In  the  midst  of  these  sweet  meditations  Death 
smote  us  both  with  his  wing;  the  sleep  of  fever  came 
upon  us  in  the  same  hour  and  I  awoke  alone !  Thou 
sleepest  now  in  the  land  of  Adonis,  near  the  holy 


28  AMPHORA 

Byblus  and  the  sacred  waters  where  the  women  of  the 
ancient  mysteries  came  to  mingle  their  tears.  Reveal 
to  me,  O  good  genius,  to  me  whom  thou  didst  love, 
those  truths  which  conquer  death,  prevent  the  fear 
thereof  and  make  it  almost  to  be  loved. 

ERNEST   RENAN. 

THE  highest  object  of  the  critical  faculty,  it  cannot 
be  too  often  repeated,  is  not  to  censure  faults, 
but  to  disengage  excellences.  Those  who,  perhaps 
with  some  loss  of  the  earlier  sensitiveness  and  recep- 
tiveness,  have  attained  a  maturer  judgment,  often 
look  on  new  poets  or  new  tastes  in  poetry  with  uneasy 
dismay.  They  lament,  as  so  many  generations  before 
them  have  lamented,  as  so  many  more  will  no  doubt 
go  on  lamenting  until  the  end  of  time,  what  seems  to 
them  the  pervei'sion  or  decline  of  taste.  Yet  the  truth 
oftener  is  that  youth,  an  unconscious  but  instinctive 
critic,  has  disengaged  and  assimilated  some  excellence 
in  the  new  poet,  some  progress  made  by  poetry  under 
the  new  method,  which  has  escaped  wiser,  or  at  least 
more  trained  eyes.  No  one,  looking  back,  ever  really 
regrets  one  of  his  own  young  enthusiasms.  It  is  the 
enthusiams  we  did  not  have  that  we  regret.  Why 
then  should  we  deplore  those  of  others,  however  unac- 
countable we  may  think  them?  Soon  enough  these 
young  revolutionaries  will  find  themselves  defending 
their  own  classics  against  a  still  younger  generation,  to 
whom  they  in  their  turn  will  be  reactionary,  obsolete, 
academic.  But  all  the  while  for  them,  as  for  us,  mov- 
ing high  overhead  in  their  silent  progress,  lordly  as  at 
the  first  day,  unobscured  by  the  dust  of  praise  or 
blame,  the  immortal  lights  shine. 

J.    W.    MACKAIL. 


AMPHORA  29 

ROSES 

THE  Rose  0/ Passion,  heavy  with  desire, 
And  niatry-petalled,  bangs  upon  the  tree  — 
Miscalled  fame  —  of  brief  mortality, 
IVherewider  strings  are  snapped  of  lute  and  lyre 
By  bleeding  hands,  the  withering  Rose's  fee, 
By  maddened  feet,  scorched  by  the  Rose's  fire. 

The  Rose  of  the  IVorld  grows  by  a  shining  pool 
IVhere  lily-nymphs  dance  daylong  on  gold  sands. 
Crying  on  man,  who  brings  them  with  both  hands 
All  he  has  found  most  rare  and  beautiful  — 
To  hear  the  laughter  of  the  fleeing  bands, 
And  his  own  image  cry  to  him  :  "  Thou  Fool !" 

The  Rose  of  Thought  ever  of  woe  bereaves 
Him  who  still  ga^es  on  the  unfolding  grace 
Of  its  dim  blossom  in  a  lonely  place. 
Until  into  his  inmost  dream  he  weaves 
The  starry  glorv  of  its  immortal  face : 
And  no  man  sees  the  falling  of  its  leaves. 

The  Rose  of  Love,  the  wildest  flower,  that  grows 

By  peasant's  hovel,  and  by  queen's  high  bower, 

Spends  all  its  life  to  scatter  in  a  shoxver, 

On  the  grey  wind  that  hither  and  thither  blows. 

The  ripe  seeds  of  the  Universal  Flower ; 

And,  where  the  wind  wills,  there  the  seed  it  sows. 

ELIZABETH   GIBSON. 

BOOKS  outside  of  the  enchanted  realm  of  art  and 
imagination  become  spent  forces ;  men  who  were 
the  driving  agents  of  their  day  sink  into  literary  names 
and  take  a  faded  place  in  the  catalogue  of  exhausted 


influences. 


JOHN    MORLEY. 


30  AMPHORA 


FINIS 


w 


RIT  on  a  ruined  palace  in  Kashmir : 

The  end  is  nothing,  and  the  end  is  near. 


IVhere  are  the  voices  kings  were  glad  to  hear  ? 
IVbere  now  the  feast,  the  song,  the  bayadere? 
The  end  is  nothing,  and  the  end  is  near. 

Andjionder  lovely  rose ;  alas  !  nij>  dear  ! 
See  the  November  garden,  rank  and  drear 
The  end  is  nothing,  and  the  end  is  near. 

See  !  how  the  rain-drop  mingles  with  the  mere. 
Mark  !  how  the  age  devours  each  passing  year. 
The  end  is  nothing,  and  the  end  is  near. 

Forms  rise  and  grow  and  wane  and  disappear, 
The  life  allotted  thee  is  now  and  here ; 
The  end  is  nothing,  and  the  end  is  near. 


Then  vex  thyself  no  more  with  thought  austere 
Take  what  thou  canst  while  thou  abidest  here. 
Seek  finer  pleasures  each  returning  year  ; 
The  end  is  nothing,  and  the  end  is  near. 


Joy  is  the  Lord,  and  Love  His  charioteer ; 
Be  tranquil  and  rejoicing ;  oh,  my  dear  ! 
Shun  the  wild  seas,  far  from  the  breakers  steer  ; 
The  end  is  vision,  and  the  end  is  near. 

Ah  !  banish  hope  and  doubt,  regret  and  fear, 
Check  the  gay  laugh,  but  dry  the  idle  tear. 


AMPHORA  31 

Search  !    Is  the  light  wt'thtn  thee  burning  clear  ? 
The  end  is  vision,  and  the  end  is  near. 

List  to  the  wisdom  learned  of  saint  and  seer  ! 
The  living  Lord  is  joy,  and  peace  His  sphere  ; 
Rebel  no  more  !  throw  down  thy  shield  and  spear, 
Surrender  all  thjyself;  true  life  is  here ; 
The  end  is  vision,  and  the  end  is  near. 

Forget  not  this,  forget  not  that,  my  dear ! 
'T  is  all  and  nothing,  and  the  end  is  near. 

*  * 


FOR  our  part,  we  can  see  in  this  proposal  to  shear 
the  edges  of  books  only  a  threat  to  one  of  the 
chief  of  the  joys  of  reading.  Your  lamp  is  lit  on  a 
winter  evening.  Your  fire  burns  brightly.  Up  the 
valley  the  wheel  of  the  old  mill  is  dipping  idly  in  the 
hurrying  water,  and  you  know  as  you  hear  it  that  it 
turns  no  stone.  The  grain  lies  in  the  lofts,  the  door  is 
barred,  and  the  miller's  dog  barks  in  the  stillness  of 
the  night  as  some  labourer  slouches  homeward.  Your 
cat  has  settled  by  the  fire  with  her  paws  upon  the 
fender  in  an  attitude  of  devotion.  Behind  you,  the 
grandfather  clock  ticks  solemnly.  But  your  thoughts 
are  not  of  time.  The  hands  turn  on  the  dial,  but  you 
heed  them  no  more  than  the  ineffective  mill-wheel. 
The  ticking  of  the  clock  blends  with  the  purring  of 
the  cat,  and  all  the  sounds  persuade  of  leisure.  Your 
book  is  on  your  knees,  and  you  insert  your  knife 
between  its  pages  with  a  curious  anticipation  of  the 
pleasures  which  it  will  open  to  you.  There  is  a  secret 
in  each  four  pages.  .  .  .  You  may  stop  and  muse  as 


32  AMPHORA 

you  advance,  a  pioneer  amid  the  outworks  of  the  cita- 
del. You  have  cut  two  pages,  and  you  pause  to  relish 
the  wealth  that  you  still  may  plunder.  What  treasure 
lies  between  the  next  two  pages  ?  In  due  course,  with 
appropriate  ritual,  that  also  you  will  despoil.  But  a 
hasty  finger  should  not  anticipate  the  discovery.  In 
such  a  mood  you  will  not  wish  to  hasten  your  pleas- 
ure. .  .  .  To  read  without  cutting  the  pages  is  to  gorge 
at  a  banquet  without  courses  or  pauses.  It  is  to  drink 
without  toasts.  It  is  to  abolish  the  clinking  of  glasses. 
....  This  is  a  commercial  age.  But  two  classes  of 
men  there  are  who  yet  will  rally  to  this  losing  cause. 
There  is  the  publisher  who  sends  out  his  books  upon 
approval.  He  will  not  trust  the  honour  of  the  hasty 
reader  with  a  book  whose  pages  have  been  cut.  There 
is  also  the  reviewer,  who  knows  the  market  value  of 
an  uncut  book  when  he  sells  it  second-hand. 

*  * 


SONG 

Is  there  no  endiug  of  song  ? 
IVill  lime  for  ever  unloosen 
New  birds  of  singing  for  flight  — 
Gold-ptiimed,  broad-pinioned  and  strong 
To  soar  through  the  heart  of  the  night 
IVith  singing  and  showering  light  ? 

Is  there  no  ending  of  mirth  ? 

IVill  time  for  ever  unloosen 

Fresh  founts,  clear,  bubbling  and  bright, 

From  the  drainless  youth  of  the  earth 

To  sprinkle  the  heart  of  the  night 

IVith  singing  and  showering  light  ? 


AMPHORA  33 


Is  there  no  ending  of  grief  ? 
IVill  lime  for  ever  unloosen 
Grey  buds  that  wither  to  white, 
And  fall  as  the  fading  leaf, 
And  sigh  in  the  heart  of  the  night, 
Or  shiver  in  showering  light  ? 

Yea,  mirth  and  grieving  shall  end; 
But  song,  upgathering,  shall  mingle 
Their  perishing  beauty  and  might, 
And  tears  and  laughter  shall  blend 
To  shatter  the  heart  of  the  night 
IVith  singing  and  showering  light. 

WILFRID    WILSON    GIBSON. 

THE  reading  of  a  great  poem,  or  the  hearing  of 
a  great  play,  should  be  like  an  experience, 
like  Life  :  when  we  make  acquaintance  with  them  first 
in  youth,  they  move  us  with  a  fine,  careless  rapture 
they  enchant  us  with  their  beauty  and  magnificence; 
but  as  they  grow  more  familiar,  it  is  the  thoughts,  the 
truth,  the  reality,  that  fill  us  and  impress  us  more  ; 
and  the  words  take  a  profounder,  often  a  more  pathetic 
meaning.  So  it  is  with  the  great  books  of  the  world ; 
so  it  is  with  Life. 

LAURENCE    BINYON. 

FOR  out  of  the  panorama  of  sense  man  builds  his 
tabernacle,  and  calls  it  life,  but  within  the  veil 
there  lies  hidden  beneath  a  power,  that  can  unlock 
other  worlds, — ^  strange,  beautiful  worlds,  like  the 
mazes  of  the  firmament  through  which  the  earth  pur- 
sues its  way. 

ROBERT    HERRICK. 


34  AMPHORA 


ON  A   COUNTRY  ROAD 

ALONG  these  low  pleached  lanes,  on  such  a  dav, 
So  soft  a  day  as  this,  through  shade  and  sun, 
IVith  glad  grave  eyes  that  scanned  the  glad  wild  way. 
And  heart  still  hovering  d'  er  a  song  begun, 
And  smile  that  warmed  the  world  with  henison. 
Our  father,  lord  long  since  of  lordly  rhyme. 
Long  since  hath  haply  ridden,  when  the  lime 
Bloomed  broad  above  him,  flowering  where  be  came. 
Because  thy  passage  once  made  warm  this  clime, 
Our  father  Chaucer,  here  we  praise  thy  name. 

Each  year  that  England  clothes  herself  with  May, 
She  takes  thy  likeness  on  her.     Time  hath  spun 
Fresh  raiment  all  in  vain  and  strange  array 
For  earth  and  man's  new  spirit,  fain  to  shun 
Things  past  for  dreams  of  better  to  be  won, 
Through  many  a  century  since  thy  funeral  chime 
Rang,  and  men  deemed  it  death's  most  direful  crime 
To  have  spared  not  thee  for  very  love  or  shame ; 
And  yet,  while  mists  round  last  year's  memories  climb. 
Our  father  Chaucer,  here  we  praise  thy  name. 

Bach  turn  of  the  old  wild  road  whereon  we  stray, 

Meseems,  might  bring  us  face  to  face  with  one 

IVhom  seeing  we  could  not  but  give  thanks,  and  pray 

For  England's  love  our  father  and  her  son 

To  speak  with  us  as  once  in  days  long  done 

IVith  all  men,  sage  and  churl  and  monk  and  mime, 

IVho  knew  not  as  we  know  the  soul  sublime 

That  sang  for  song's  love  more  than  lust  of  fame. 

Yet,  though  this  be  not, yet,  in  happy  time, 

Our  father  Chaucer,  here  we  praise  thy  name. 


AMPHORA  35 

Friend,  even  as  bees  about  the  flowering  thyme, 
Years  crowd  onjyears,  till  boar  decay  begrime 
Names  once  beloved ;  but,  seeing  the  sun  the  same, 
/Is  birds  of  autumn  fain  to  praise  the  prime, 
Our  father  Chaucer,  here  we  praise  thj>  name. 

ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE. 

ONCE  upon  a  time  all  books  were  perpetuated  by 
copying  with  the  hand ;  whoever  would  possess 
a  volume,  must  undergo  the  toil  of  transcribing  it,  or 
pay  the  price  of  that  toil  to  another.  This  was  the 
narrowness  of  the  circle  of  the  learned.  The  perfec- 
tion of  the  copyist's  art  was  soon  attained,  but  the 
utmost  rapidity  and  cheapness  in  this  mode  of  multi- 
plying books  could  not  render  them  to  the  mass  of 
the  public.  How  was  the  seeming  impossibility  to  be 
surmounted.''  By  some  meaner  process  which  should 
deteriorate  the  appearance  of  books  to  a  degree  com- 
mensurate with  the  humble  fortunes  of  the  poor;  so 
that  if  the  rich  man's  Bible  cost  him  £2^,  a  copy  of 
but  one-sixtieth  the  excellence  should  be  produced  for 
one-sixtieth  the  sum  ?  Far  from  it  indeed  !  The  means 
of  making  the  poor  man  a  proprietor  of  books,  lay  in 
a  glorious  new  art  that  clothed  all  literature  in  a  bod- 
ily frame  of  surpassing  beauty  and  usefulness,  and 
placed  it  in  the  hands  of  the  common  people  in  a  form 
that,  before  the  invention  of  printing  the  greatest  kings 
would  have  envied;  and  which  even  Virgil  or  Cicero 
would  not  have  disdained  as  the  material  pedestal  of 
their  immortality.  This  art,  simpler  and  more  uni- 
versal than  writing,  was  not  lower  but  immeasurably 
higher  than  its  predecessor,  whose  services  were  for 
the  noble  and  the  learned. 

JAMES   JOHN   GARTH    WILKINSON. 


36  AMPHORA 

EVEN  if  good  literature  entirely  lost  currency  with 
the  world,  it  would  still  be  abundantly  worth 
while  to  enjoy  it  by  one's  self.  But  it  never  will  lose 
currency  with  the  world,  in  spite  of  momentary  appear- 
ances ;  it  never  will  lose  supremacy.  Currency  and 
supremacy  are  ensured  to  it,  not  indeed  by  the  world's 
deliberate  and  conscious  choice,  but  by  something  far 
deeper,  by  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  in  human- 
ity. 

MATTHEW    ARNOLD. 


THERE  has  been  twilight  here,  since  one  whom  some 
name  Life  and  some  Death  slid  between  us  the 
little  shadow  that  is  the  unfathomable  dark  and  silence. 
In  a  grave  deeper  than  is  hollowed  under  the  wind- 
sweet  grass  lies  that  which  was  so  passing  fair. 

Who  plays  the  Song  of  Songs  upon  the  Hills  of 
Dream  ?  It  is  said  Love  is  that  reed-player,  for  there 
is  no  song  like  his. 

But  to-day  I  saw  one,  on  these  dim  garths  of  shadow 
and  silence,  who  put  a  reed  to  his  lips  and  played  a 
white  spell  of  beauty.  Then  I  knew  Love  and  Death 
to  be  one,  as  in  the  old  myth  of  Oengus  of  the  White 
Birds  and  the  Grey  Shadows. 

Here  are  the  broken  airs  that  once  you  loved.  .  . 

"  The  fable-flowering  land  wherein  they  grew 
Hath  dreams  for  stars,  and  grey  romance  for  dew." 

They  are  but  the  breath  of  what  has  been  :  only  are 
they  for  this,  that  they  do  the  will  of  beauty  and 
regret. 

FIONA    MACLEOD. 


AMPHORA  37 


\JL  T'lTHiN  tbe  Book,  I,  reading,  found 
V  V       /^  saying  that  was  hard  to  me, 
IVords  that  had  something  in  their  sound 
That  spoilt  Eternitjy. 

I  knew  a  sense  of  loss,  a  part 

Of  some  dear  vision  gone  from  me, 

y4s  all  its  meaning  smote  mjp  heart 

There  shall  be  no  more  Sea. 

Had  not  mj  spirit  ranged  amid 
The  Kingdoms  of  Futnritj, 
Finding  in  dreams  the  glories  hid 
From  blind  humanity. 

And  as  I  read  the  words  that  bore 
Such  sad  significance  to  me, 
I  grieved  that  I  should  find  no  more 
A  magic  shore  and  sea. 

No  ocean  sighing  in  its  sleep. 
No  waves  to  chant  the  litanj! 
Of  deep  repljying  unto  deep. 
In  mystic  threnody. 

Only  a  barren  landscape  fraught 
IVitb  changeless  silence :  no  delight 
Of  green  and  purple  splendours,  naught 
Of  wandering  waters  bright. 

I  close  the  Book  and  lay  it  down. 
And  dream  a  dream  that  there  may  be 
For  those  who  serve  the  God  Unknown, 
Perchance  an  unknown  sea. 


38  AMPHORA 

TO  MAURICE  ANDREWS  BUCKE 

DEAR  Maurice  :  —  A  year  ago  to-day,  in  the  prime 
of  youth,  of  health  and  of  strength,  in  an 
mstant,  by  a  terrible  and  fatal  accident,  you  were 
removed  forever  from  this  world  in  which  your  mother 
and  I  still  live.  Of  all  young  men  I  have  known  you 
were  the  most  pure,  the  most  noble,  the  most  honour- 
able, the  most  tender-hearted.  In  the  business  of  life 
you  were  industrious,  honest,  faithful,  intelligent  and 
entirely  trustworthy.  How  at  the  time  we  felt  your 
loss  —  how  we  still  feel  it  —  I  would  not  set  down 
even  if  I  could.  I  desire  to  speak  here  of  my  confi- 
dent hope,  not  of  my  pain.  I  will  say  that  through 
the  experiences  which  underlie  this  volume  [Cosmic 
Coi!sciousness\  I  have  been  taught,  that  in  spite  of 
death  and  the  grave,  although  you  are  beyond  the 
range  of  our  sight  and  hearing  notwithstanding  that 
the  universe  of  sense  testifies  to  your  absence,  you  are 
not  dead  and  not  really  absent,  but  alive  and  well  and 
not  far  from  me  this  moment.  If  I  have  been  per- 
mitted—  no,  not  to  enter,  but  —  through  the  narrow 
aperture  of  a  scarcely  opened  door,  to  glance  one 
instant  into  that  other  divine  world,  it  was  surely  that 
I  might  thereby  be  enabled  to  live  through  the  receipt 
of  those  lightning-flashed  words  from  Montana  which 
time  burns  only  deeper  and  deeper  into  my  brain. 

Only  a  little  while  now  and  we  shall  be  again 
together  and  with  us  those  other  noble  and  well- 
beloved  souls  gone  before.  I  am  sure  I  shall  meet 
you  and  them  ;  that  you  and  I  shall  talk  of  a  thousand 
things  and  of  that  unforgettable  day  and  of  all  that 
followed  it ;  and  that  we  shall  clearly  see  that  all  were 
parts  of  an  infinite  plan  which  was  wholly  wise  and 


AMPHORA  39 


good.  Do  you  see  and  approve  as  I  write  these  words  ? 
It  may  well  be.  Do  you  read  from  within  what  I  am 
now  thinking  and  feeling?  If  you  do  you  know  how 
dear  to  me  you  were  while  you  yet  lived  what  we  call 
life  here  and  how  much  more  dear  you  have  become 
to  me  since. 

Because  of  the  indissoluble  links  of  birth  and  death 
wrought  by  nature  and  fate  between  us;  because  of 
my  love  and  because  of  my  grief ;  above  all  because 
of  the  infinite  and  inextinguishable  confidence  there  is 
in  my  heart,  I  inscribe  to  you  this  book,  which,  full  as 
it  is  of  imperfections  which  render  it  unworthy  of  your 
acceptance,  has  nevertheless  sprung  from  the  divine 
assurance  born  of  the  deepest  insight  of  the  noblest 
members  of  our  race. 

So  long  !  dear  boy. 

YOUR    FATHER. 

TOASTS  IN  A  LIBRARY 

1  RAISE  My;  glass  (Carthusian  brew, 
And  pure  the  emerald  shines), 
A  sip  to  thee,  mj>  Rabelais  — 
The  wisest  of  divines. 

But  lest  thy  genial  earthjf  soul 

Should  claim  too  much  of  me, 
I  turn  to  him  who  to  the  Lark 

Gave  his  own  ecstasy. 

A  subtle  drink  and  delicate 

One  owes  to  Thomas  Browne, 
A)id  noble  port  when  Gibbon  hands 

Sonorous  wisdom  down. 


40  AMPHORA 

For  thee,  suave  Horace,  unperplexed. 
Well-bred,  well-nourished  man, 

I  would  unstop  an  amphora 
Of  thjy  Falernian. 

I  name  them  not  (too  great  to  name), 

The  choice  Hellenic  Few, 
I  drink  in  silence  piously : 

Then  turn  I,  friend,  toyou.^ 

O,  smiling  soul,  that  craved  the  sun, 

Yet  ample  suffering  bore. 
This  be  jour  praise  :  "  He  loved  Art  much, 

But  men  and  nature  more." 

*  * 


LET  US  consider,  too,  how  differently  young  and  old 
are  affected  by  the  words  of  some  classic  author, 
such  as  Homer  or  Horace.  Passages,  which  to  a  boy 
are  but  rhetorical  commonplaces,  neither  better  nor 
worse  than  a  hundred  others  which  any  clever  writer 
might  supply ;  which  he  gets  by  heart  and  thinks  very 
fine,  and  imitates,  as  he  thinks,  successfully  in  his  own 
flowing  versification,  at  length  come  home  to  him, 
when  long  years  have  passed,  and  he  has  had  experi- 
ence of  life,  and  pierce  him  as  if  he  had  never  before 
known  them,  with  their  sad  earnestness  and  vivid 
exactness. 

Then  he  comes  to  understand  how  it  is  that  lines, 
the  birth  of  some  chance  morning  or  evening  at  an 
Ionian  festival  or  among  the  Sabine  Hills,  have  lasted 
generation  after  generation,  for  thousands  of  years ; 

I  "R.  L.  S."  —  Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 


AMPHORA  41 

with  a  power  over  the  mind,  and  a  charm,  which  the 
current  literature  of  his  own  day,  with  all  its  obvious 
advantages,  is  utterly  unable  to  rival. 

CARDINAL    NEWMAN. 
THE  BOOKWORM 

THE  whole  day  long  I  sit  and  read 
Of  days  when  meti  were  men  indeed 
And  women  km ghtlier  far  : 
I  fight  with  Joan  of  Arc;  I  fall 
IVitb  Talbot ;  from  my  castle-wall 
I  watch  the  guiding  star  .  .  . 

But  when  at  last  the  twilight  falls 
And  hangs  about  the  book-lined  walls 

And  creeps  across  the  page, 
Then  the  enchantment  goes,  and  I 
Close  up  my  volumes  with  a  sigh 

To  greet  a  narrower  age. 

Home  through  the  pearly  dusk  I  go 
And  watch  the  London  lamplight  glow 

Far  off  in  wavering  lines : 
A  pale  grey  world  with  primrose  gleams. 
And  in  the  IVest  a  cloud  that  seems 

My  distant  Apennines. 

O  Life  !  so  full  of  truths  to  teach, 
O  secrets  I  shall  never  reach, 

O  world  of  Here  and  Now  ; 
Forgive,  forgive  me,  if  a  voice, 
A  ghost,  a  memory  be  my  choice 

And  more  to  me  than  Thou  ! 

A.    MARY   F.   ROBINSON. 


42  AMPHORA 

BALLADE  OF  THE  BOOKWORM 

FAR  in  the  Past  I  peer,  and  see 
A  Child  upon  the  Nursery  floor, 
A  Child  ivith  books  upon  his  knee. 
Who  asks,  like  Oliver,  for  more  ! 
The  number  of  his  years  is  ly. 
And  yet  in  Letters  hath  he  skill. 
How  deep  he  dives  in  Fairy-lore  ! 
The  Books  I  loved,  I  love  them  still ! 

One  gift  the  Fairies  gave  me  :  (  Three 
They  commonly  bestowed  of  yore) 
The  Love  of  Books,  the  Golden  Key 
That  opens  the  Enchaunted  Door  ; 
Behind  it  Bluebeard  lurks,  and  o''er 
And  o'er  doth  Jack  his  Giants  kill. 
And  there  is  all  Aladdin's  5/0?-^, — 
The  Books  I  loved,  I  love  them  still ! 

Take  all,  but  leave  my  Books  to  tne  ! 

These  heavy  creels  of  old  we  bore 

IVe  fill  not  now,  nor  wander  free, 

Nor  wear  the  heart  that  once  we  wore  ; 

Nor  now  each  River  seems  to  pour 

His  waters  from  the  Muses'  hill ; 

Though  something 's  gone  from  stream  and  shore. 

The  Books  I  loved,  I  love  them  still ! 


Fate,  that  art  Queen  by  shore  and  sea, 
IVe  how  submissive  to  thy  will, 
Ah  grant,  by  some  benign  decree. 
The  Books  I  loved — to  love  them  still. 

ANDREW    LANG. 


AMPHORA  43 

WHAT  matter  though  my  room  be  small, 
Though  the  red  lamp-light  looks 
On  nothing  but  a  papered  wall, 
And  some  few  rows  of  books  ? 

For  in  my  hand  I  hold  a  key 

That  opens  golden  doors, 
At  whose  resistless  sesame, 

A  tide  of  sunlight  pours. 

In  from  the  basking  lawns  that  lie 

Beyond  the  boimdary  wall ; 
Where  summer  broods  eternally. 

Where  the  cicadas  call. 

There  all  the  landscape  softer  is. 

There  greener  tendrils  twine. 
The  bowers  are  roofed  with  clema)is. 

With  briony  and  vine. 

There  pears  and  golden  apples  hang. 

There  falls  the  honey-dew. 
And  there  the  birds  at  morning  sang, 

When  all  the  world  was  new. 

Beneath  an  oak  Menalcas  woos 

Arachnia's  nut-brown  eyes ; 
And  still  the  laughing  Faun  pursues. 

And  still  the  Dryad  flies. 

And  you  may  bear  young  Orpheus  there 

Come  singing  through  the  wood. 
Or  catch  the  gleam  of  golden  hair 

In  Dianas  solitude. 


44  AMPHORA 

So  when  the  world  is  all  awry, 
IVhen  life  is  out  of  chime, 

I  lake  the  golden  key  and  fly 
To  that  serener  clime : 

To  those  fair  sun-lit  lawns  that  lie 
Beyond  the  boundary  wall : 

IVhere  summer  broods  eternally, 
And  Youth  is  over  all. 


JOHN    MEADE    FALKNER. 


A  BOOK  is  essentially  not  a  talked  thing,  but  a  writ- 
ten thing;  and  written,  not  with  a  view  of  mere 
communication,  but  of  permanence.  .  .  .  The  author 
has  something  to  say  which  he  perceives  to  be  true 
and  useful,  or  helpfully  beautiful.  ...  In  the  sum  of 
his  life  he  finds  this  to  be  the  thing,  or  group  of  things, 
manifest  to  him  ;  —  this,  the  piece  of  true  knowledge, 
or  sight,  which  his  share  of  sunshine  and  earth  has 
permitted  him  to  seize.  He  would  fain  set  it  down 
for  ever;  engrave  it  on  rock,  if  he  could;  saying, 
"  This  is  the  best  of  me ;  for  the  rest,  I  ate,  and 
drank,  and  slept,  loved,  and  hated,  like  another;  my 
life  was  as  the  vapour,  and  is  not ;  but  this  I  saw 
and  knew :  this,  if  anything  of  mine,  is  worth  your 
memory."  .  .  . 

Now,  books  of  this  kind  have  been  written  in  all 
ages  by  their  greatest  men:  —  by  great  readers,  great 
statesmen,  and  great  thinkers.  These  are  all  at  your 
choice  ;  and  Life  is  short. 

JOHN    RUSKIN. 


AMPHORA  45 

1FEEL  as  I  read  that  if  the  stage  shows  us  the  masks 
of  men  and  the  pageant  of  the  world,  Books  let  us 
into  their  souls  and  lay  open  to  us  the  secrets  of  our 
own.  They  are  the  first  and  last,  the  most  home-felt, 
the  most  heart-felt  of  all  our  enjoyments! 

WILLIAM    HAZLITT. 


THERE  ts  a  dish  to  hold  (he  sea, 
A  brazier  to  contain  the  sun, 
A  compass  for  the  galaxy, 

A  voice  to  wake  the  dead  and  done  ! 

That  minister  of  ministers, 

Imagination,  gathers  up 
The  undiscovered  Universe, 

Like  jewels  in  a  jasper  cup. 

Its  flame  can  mingle  north  and  south  ; 

Its  accent  with  the  thunder  strive  ; 
The  ruddy  sentence  of  its  mouth 

Can  make  the  ancient  dead  alive. 

The  mart  of  power,  the  fount  of  will, 
The  form  and  mould  of  every  star. 

The  source  and  bound  of  good  and  ill. 
The  key  of  all  the  things  that  are. 

Imagination,  new  and  strange 

In  every  age,  can  turn  the  year, 
Can  shift  the  poles  and  lightly  change 

The  mood  of  men,  the  world's  career. 

JOHN    DAVIDSON. 


46  AMPHORA 


A 


i^iTTLE  work,  a  little  play 
To  keep  us  going  —  and  so  good-day  ! 


A  little  warmth,  a  little  light 

Of  lovers  bestowing  —  and  so,  good-night  ! 

A  little  fun,  to  match  the  sorrow 

Of  each  day's  growing  —  a>id  so,  good-morrow  ! 

A  little  trust  that  when  we  die 

We  reap  our  sowing  !    And  so  —  good-bye  ! 

GEORGE    DU    MAURIER. 


CONSIDER  what  you  have  in  the  smallest  chosen 
library.  A  company  of  the  wisest  and  wittiest 
men  that  could  be  picked  out  of  all  civil  countries,  in 
a  thousand  years,  have  set  in  best  order  the  results  of 
their  learning  and  wisdom.  The  men  themselves  were 
hid  and  inaccessible,  solitary,  impatient  of  interruption, 
fenced  by  etiquette;  but  the  thought  which  they  did 
not  uncover  to  their  bosom  friend  is  here  written  out 
in  transparent  words  to  us,  the  strangers  of  another 
age.  We  owe  to  books  those  general  benefits  which 
come  from  high  intellectual  action.  Thus,  I  think,  we 
often  owe  to  them  the  perception  of  immortality.  .  .  . 
Go  with  mean  people,  and  you  think  life  is  mean. 
Then  read  Plutarch,  and  the  world  is  a  proud  place, 
peopled  with  men  of  positive  (juality,  with  heroes 
and  demigods  standing  around  us,  who  will  not  let  us 

sleep 

It  seems,  then,  as  if  some  charitable  soul,  after  losing 
a  great  deal  of  time  among  the  false  books,  and  alight- 
ing upon  a  few  true  ones  which  made  him  happy  and 


AMPHORA  47 

wise,  would  do  a  right  act  in  naming  those  which  have 
been  bridges  or  ships  to  carry  him  safely  over  dark 
morasses  and  barren  oceans,  into  the  heart  of  sacred 
cities,  into  palaces  and  temples. 

RALPH   WALDO   EMERSON. 


THE  RETURN 

A  LITTLE  hand  is  hiocMng  at  my  heart. 
And  I  have  closed  the  door. 
"I pray  thee,  for  the  love  of  God,  depart  : 
Thou  shalt  come  in  no  more." 

"Open,  for  I  am  weary  of  the  way. 

The  night  is  very  black. 

I  have  been  wandering  many  a  night  and  day. 

Open.     I  have  come  back." 

The  little  hand  is  knocking  patiently  ; 
I  listen,  dumb  with  pain. 
"  IVilt  thou  not  open  any  more  to  me  ? 
I  havo  come  back  again." 

"/  will  not  open  any  more.     Depart. 

I,  that  once  lived,  am  dead." 

The  hand  that  had  been  knocking  at  my  heart 

IVas  still.     "And  I ?"  she  said. 

There  is  no  sound,  save,  in  the  winter  air. 
The  sound  of  wind  and  rain. 
All  that  I  loved  in  all  the  world  stands  there, 
And  will  not  knock  again. 

ARTHUR    SYMONS. 


48  AMPHORA 

FALSE  again,  the  fabled  link  between  the  grandeur 
of  Art  and  the  glories  and  virtues  of  the  State, 
for  Art  feeds  not  upon  nations,  and  peoples  may  be 
wiped  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  but  Art  h. 

It  is  indeed  high  time  that  we  cast  aside  the  weary 
weight  of  responsibility  and  copartnership,  and  know 
that,  in  no  way,  do  our  virtues  minister  to  its  worth,  in 
no  way  do  our  vices  impede  its  triumph ! 

How  irksome!  how  hopeless  !  how  superhuman  the 
self-imposed  task  of  the  nation  !  how  sublimely  vain 
the  belief  that  it  shall  live  nobly  or  art  perish  ! 

Let  us  reassure  ourselves,  at  our  own  option  is  our 
virtue.     Art  we  in  no  way  affect. 

A  whimsical  goddess,  and  a  capricious,  her  strong 
sense  of  joy  tolerates  no  dulness,  and,  live  we  never  so 
spotlessly,  still  may  she  turn  her  back  upon  us. 

As  from  time  immemorial,  has  she  done  upon  the 
Swiss  in  their  mountains. 

What  more  worthy  people!  Whose  every  Alpine 
gap  yawns  with  tradition,  and  is  stocked  with  noble 
story ;  yet,  the  perverse  and  scornful  one  will  none  of 
it,  and  the  sons  of  patriots  are  left  with  the  clock  that 
turns  the  mill,  and  the  sudden  cuckoo,  with  difficulty 
restrained  in  its  box  ! 

For  this  was  Tell  a  hero  !     For  this  did  Gessler  die  1 

Art,  the  cruel  jade,  cares  not,  and  hardens  her  heart, 
and  hies  her  off  to  the  East,  to  find,  among  the  opium- 
eaters  of  Nankin,  a  favourite  with  whom  she  lingers 
fondly  —  caressing  his  blue  porcelain,  and  painting  his 
coy  maidens,  and  marking  his  plates  with  her  six  marks 
of  choice  —  indifferent,  in  her  companionship  with 
him,  to  all  save  the  virtue  of  his  refinement! 

He  it  is  who  calls  her —  he  who  holds  her! 

J.   A.    MCNEILL  WHISTLER. 


AMPHORA  49 


BUT  still  for  Summer  dost  thou  grieve? 
Then  read  our  Poets  —  they  shall  weave 
A  garden  of  green  fancies  still, 
Where  thy  wish  may  rove  at  will. 
They  have  kept  for  after  treats 
The  essences  of  summer  sweets, 
And  echoes  of  its  songs  that  wind 
In  endless  music  through  the  mind: 
They  have  stamp' d  in  visible  traces 
The  ^^ thoughts  that  breathe"  in  words  that  shine  — 
The  flights  of  soul  in  sunny  places  — 
To  greet  and  company  with  thine. 
These  shall  wing  thee  on  to  flow'' rs — 
The  past  or  future,  that  shall  seem 
All  the  brighter  in  thv  dream 
For  blowing  in  such  desert  hours. 
The  summer  never  shines  so  bright 
As  thought  of  in  a  winter^ s  night ; 
And  the  sweetest  loveliest  rose 
Is  in  the  bud  before  it  blows  ; 


Dream  thou  then,  and  bind  thy  brow 

With  wreath  of  fancy  roses  now, 

And  drink  of  Summer  in  the  cup 

Where  the  Muse  hath  mix'd  it  up  ; 

The  ^^  dance,  and  song,  and  sun-burnt  mirth" 

With  the  warm  nectar  of  the  earth  : 

Drink  !  '/  will  glow  in  every  vein. 

And  thou  shall  dream  the  winter  through  : 

Then  waken  to  the  sun  again, 

And  find  thy  Summer  yision  true  ! 

THOMAS   HOOD. 


so 


AMPHORA 


A  TRUE  and  classic  book  is  always  the  history  some 
human  soul  has  had  in  its  tent  of  flesh,  camped 
out  beneath  the  stars,  groping  for  the  thing  they  shine 
to  us,  trying  to  find  a  body  for  it.  In  the  great  wide 
plain  of  wonder  there  they  sing  the  wonder  a  little 
time  to  us,  if  we  listen.  Then  they  pass  on  to  it. 
Literature  is  but  the  faint  echo  tangled  in  thousands 
of  years  of  this  mighty,  lonely  singing  of  theirs,  under 
the  Dome  of  Life,  in  the  presence  of  the  things  that 
books  are  about.  The  power  to  read  a  great  book  is 
the  power  to  glory  in  these  things,  and  to  use  that 
glory  every  day  to  do  one's  living  and  reading  with. 
Knowing  what  is  in  the  book  may  be  called  learning, 
but  the  test  of  culture  always  is  that  it  will  not  be 
content  with  knowledge  unless  it  is  inward  knowledge. 
Inward  knowledge  is  the  knowledge  that  comes  to  us 
from  behind  the  book,  from  living  for  weeks  with  the 
author  until  his  habits  have  become  our  habits, — 
until  God  Himself,  through  days  and  nights  and  deeds 
and  dreams,  has  blended  our  souls  together. 

GERALD    STANLEY    LEE. 


ARTIST  ill  verse,  to  whom  the  world  appears 
Most  real,  andjyet  the  mirrored  form  of  truth, 
From  whom  alone  the  wasteful  lapse  of  years 

Robs  nothing  of  eartWs  beauty  or  her  youth. 

Be  grave,  but  joyous,  with  no  taint  of  ruth, 
For  thou  canst  make  an  April  shower  of  tears 
Immortal,  and  so  lull  the  aching  ears 

Of  grief,  that  she  shall  laugh  in  time  to  come, 
IVhen  her  own  melancholy  voice  she  hears 

Grown  sweet  on  lips  that  never  can  be  dumb. 

EDMUND    GOSSE. 


AMPHORA 


51 


LULLABY 

ROCK,  rock,  O  weary  world, 
Rock  thj>  great  heart  to  rest. 
The  wings  of  all  the  winds  are  furled — 
The  stars  are  hidden  out  of  sight. 
Rocked  on  the  heaven's  breast. 
The  silver  moon  doth  give  no  light  — 
Closed,  closed  are  all  the  eyes  of  night 
In  sleep.     So  also  thou, 
O  weary,  weary  world,  rest  now- 

*  * 


THE  Book  Beautiful,  then,  should  be  conceived  of 
as  a  whole,  and  the  self-assertion  of  any  Art 
beyond  the  limits  imposed  by  the  conditions  of  its 
creation  should  be  looked  upon  as  an  Act  of  Treason. 
The  proper  duty  of  each  Art  within  such  limits  is  to 
cooporate  witli  all  the  other  arts,  similarly  employed, 
in  the  production  of  something  which  is  distinctly  Not- 
Itself.  The  wholeness,  symmetry,  harmony,  beauty 
without  stress  or  strain,  of  the  Book  Beautiful,  would 
then  be  one  in  principle  with  the  wholeness,  symmetry, 
harmony,  and  beauty  without  stress  or  strain,  of  that 
whole  of  life  zvhich  is  constituted  of  ourselves  and  the 
world,  that  complex  and  marvellous  whole  which,  amid 
the  strife  of  competitive  forces,  supremely  holds  its  own, 
and  in  the  language  of  life  writes,  upon  the  illumined 
pages  of  the  days,  the  volumes  of  the  centuries,  and 
through  the  infniiudes  of  time  and  space  moves  rhythmi- 
cally onzdhrd  to  the  full  development  of  its  astofiishing 
story  the  true  archetype  of  all  books  beautiful  or  sublime. 

T.    J.    COBDEN-SANDERSON. 


52  AMPHORA 

THE  beauty  of  a  statue,  a  coin,  or  a  flower  is  the 
same  thing  as  the  beauty  of  a  phrase  or  sen- 
tence :  it  requires  the  same  taste  to  feel  pleasure  in 
the  lines  of  a  sea-shell,  or  a  fir-cone,  as  to  enjoy  the 
mould  of  a  fine  sonnet  or  the  build  of  a  great  poem. 
But  in  art  and  in  literature  alike  one  desires  to  go 
back  beyond  the  mere  results,  however  fully  their 
worth  and  significance  be  understood.  The  deeper 
we  see  into  the  spirit  of  the  work,  the  more  we  wish 
to  know  the  spirit  of  the  artist  or  writer,  to  know  how 
the  mind  of  the  maker  was  made,  the  stars  that  met 
at  his  birth,  the  ways  of  thought  and  feeling  and 
action  of  the  world  in  which  he  moved. 

ALFRED  J.  BUTLER. 


POETRY 

JAM  the  realilj}'  of  things  that  seem  ; 
The  great  transmuter,  melting  loss  to  gain, 
Languor  to  love,  and  fining  Jof  from  pain. 
I  am  the  -waking,  zcbo  am  called  the  dream  ; 
I  am  the  sun,  all  light  reflects  my  gleam ; 
I  am  the  altar -fire  u-ithin  the  fane  ; 
I  am  the  force  of  the  refreshing  rain  ; 
I  am  the  sea  to  which  flows  every  stream. 
I  am  the  utmost  height  there  is  to  climb ; 
I  am  the  truth,  mirrored  in  fancy  s  glass ; 
I  am  stability,  all  else  will  pass  ; 
I  am  eternity,  encircling  time  ; 
Kill  me,  none  may  ;  conquer  me,  nothing  cdn  — 
/  am  God^s  soul,  fused  in  the  soul  of  man. 

ELLA    HEATH. 


AMPHORA  53 

No  wonder  that  Alexander  carried  the  Iliad  with 
him  on  his  expeditions  in  a  precious  casket. 
A  written  word  is  the  choicest  of  relics.  It  is  some- 
thing at  once  more  intimate  with  us  and  more  universal 
than  any  other  work  of  art  nearest  to  life  itself.  It 
may  be  translated  into  every  language,  and  not  only 
be  read  but  actually  breathed  from  all  human  lips  ;  — 
not  be  represented  on  canvas  or  in  marble  only,  but 
be  carved  out  of  the  breath  of  life  itself.  The  symbol 
of  an  ancient  man's  thought  becomes  a  modern  man's 
speech.  Two  thousand  summers  have  imparted  to 
the  monuments  of  Grecian  literature,  as  to  her  mar- 
bles, only  a  maturer  golden  and  autumnal  tint,  for 
they  have  carried  their  own  serene  and  celestial  atmos- 
phere into  all  lands  to  protect  them  against  the 
corrosion  of  time.  Books  are  the  treasured  wealth  of 
the  world  and  the  fit  inheritance  of  generations  and 
nations.  Books,  the  oldest  and  the  best,  stand  natu- 
rally and  rightfully  on  the  shelves  of  every  cottage. 
They  have  no  cause  of  their  own  to  plead,  but  while 
they  enlighten  and  sustain  the  reader,  his  common- 
sense  will  not  refuse  them.  Their  authors  are  natural 
and  irresistible  aristocracy  in  every  society,  and,  more 
than  kings  or  emperors,  exert  an  influence  on  mankind. 

HENRY   D.   THOREAU. 

GH0S7S  /N  THE  UBRARY 

What  company  we  might  all  keep  if  the  old  lovers 
of  our  old  books  could  visit  us ! 

SUPPOSE,  when  now  the  house  is  dumb, 
IVhen  lights  are  out,  and  ashes  fall — 
Suppose  their  ancient  owners  come 
To  claim  our  spoils  of  shop  and  stall, 


54  AMPHORA 

Ah  me  !  within  the  narrow  hall 
How  strange  a  mob  would  meet  and  go, 
What  famous  folk  would  haunt  them  all, 
Octavo,  quarto,  folio  ! 


IVhat  fatuous  folk  of  old  are  here! 

A  royal  duke  comes  down  to  us. 
And  greatly  wants  his  Elzevir, 

His  Pagan  tutor,  Lucius. 
And  Beckford  claims  an  amorous 

Old  heathen  in  morocco  blue ; 
And  who  demands  Eobanus 

But  stately  Jacques  Auguste  de  Thou  ! 

They  come,  the  wise,  the  great,  the  true. 

They  jostle  on  the  narrow  stair, 
The  frolic  Countess  de  Verrue, 

Lamoignon,  ay,  and  Longepierre, 
The  new  and  elder  dead  are  there  — 

The  lords  of  speech,  and  song,  and  pen, 
Gamhetta,  Schlegel,  and  the  rare 

Drummond  of  haunted  Hawthornden. 


At  least  in  pleasant  company 

We  bookish  ghosts,  perchance,  may  flit ; 
A  man  may  turn  a  page,  and  sigh. 

Seeing  one's  name,  to  think  of  it. 
Beauty,  or  Poet,  Sage,  or  Wit, 

May  ope  our  book,  and  muse  awhile. 
And  fall  into  a  dreaming  fit. 

As  now  we  dream,  and  wake,  and  smile  ! 

ANDREW   LANG. 


AMPHORA  55 

AND  Books  1  those  miraculous  memories  of  high 
thoughts  and  golden  moods;  those  silver  shells, 
tremulous  with  the  wonderful  secrets  of  the  ocean  of 
life ;  those  love-letters  that  pass  from  hand  to  hand 
of  a  thousand  lovers  that  never  meet ;  those  honey- 
combs of  dreams  ;  those  orchards  of  knowledge ;  those 
still-beating  hearts  of  the  noble  dead ;  those  mysteri- 
ous signals  that  beckon  along  the  darksome  pathways 
of  the  past ;  voices  through  which  the  myriad  lispings 
of  the  earth  find  perfect  speech  ;  oracles  through  which 
its  mysteries  call  like  voices  in  moonlit  woods ;  prisms 
of  beauty ;  urns  stored  with  all  the  sweets  of  all  the 
summers  of  time;  immortal  nightingales  that  sing  for- 
ever to  the  rose  of  life  1 

RICHARD    LE    GALI.IENNE. 

CONFESSrO  AMANTIS 

WHEN  do  I  love  you  most,  sweet  hooks  of  mine  ? 
In  strenuous  morns  when  o'erj'onr  leaves  I  pore, 
Austerely  bent  to  win  austerest  lore. 
For  fretting  how  the  dewy  meadows  shine  ; 
Or  afternoons  when  honeysuckles  twine 
About  the  seat,  and  to  some  dreamy  shore 
Of  old  romance,  where  lovers  evermore 
Keep  blissful  hours,  I  follow  at  your  sign  ? 

Yea  !     Ye  are  precious  then,  but  most  to  me 
Ere  lamplight  dawneth,  when  low  croons  the  fire 
To  whispering  twilight  in  my  little  room  ; 
And  eyes  read  not,  but  sitting  silently, 
I  feel  your  great  hearts  throbbing  deep  in  quire. 
And  hear  your  breathing  round  me  in  the  gloom. 

RICHARD  LE   GALLIENNE. 


56  AMPHORA 

ROMAN  GLASSWARE  PRESERI^ED  /N  THE  ASHMOLEAN 

FAIR  aystal  cups  are  dug  from  earth'' s  old  crust, 
Shattered  but  lovely ;  for,  at  price  of  all 
Their  shameful  exile  from  the  baiiquet-hall. 
They  have  been  bargaining  beauties  from  the  dust. 
So,  dig  my  life  but  deep  enough,  you  must 

Find  broken  friendships  round  its  inner  -wall  — 
IVhich  once  my  careless  hand  let  slip  and  fall  — 
Brave  with  faint  memories,  rich  in  rainbow-rust. 

ARTHUR    UPSON. 


THE  great  men  of  culture  are  those  who  have  had  a 
passion  for  diffusing,  for  making  prevail,  for 
carrying  from  one  end  of  society  to  the  other,  the  best 
knowledge,  the  best  ideas  of  their  time;  who  have 
laboured  to  divest  knowledge  of  all  that  was  harsh, 
uncouth,  difficult,  abstract,  professional,  exclusive  ;  to 
humanize  it,  to  make  it  efficient  outside  the  clique  of 
the  cultivated  and  learned,  yet  still  remaining  the  />esi 
knowledge  and  thought  of  the  time,  and  a  true  source, 
therefore,  of  sweetness  and  light. 

MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

FOR  in  the  end  scholarship  does  not  mean  raking 
among  the  dust  of  a  dead  language  for  relics  of 
roots  or  atoms  of  grammar ;  it  is  rather  the  study  of 
living  beauty  in  shapes  of  speech,  and  its  highest 
result  is  not  the  knowledge  of  tenses  and  particles, 
but  the  power  of  understanding  and  loving  what  is 
beautiful  in  the  writings  of  great  writers  and  in  the 
world  of  nature. 

ALFRED   J.    BUTLER, 


AMPHORA  57 

THE  LAST  JOURNEY 

1KELT  the  world  a-spimnng  on  its  nave, 
I  felt  it  sheering  blindly  round  I  he  sun  ; 
I  felt  the  time  had  come  to  find  a  grave  : 

I  knew  it  in  mjy  heart  my  dajys  were  done. 
I  took  my  staff  in  hand :  1  took  the  road. 
And  wandered  out  to  seek  mjy  last  abode. 
Hearts  of  gold  and  hearts  of  lead, 

Sing  it  j'et  in  sun  and  rain, 
"  Heel  and  toe  from  daxcn  to  dusk, 
Round  the  world  and  home  again-' ^ 

Mj>  feet  are  heavy  now,  but  on  I  go, 

Mv  head  erect  beneath  the  tragic  fears. 
The  way  is  steep,  but  I  would  have  it  so ; 

And  dusty,  but  I  lay  the  dust  with  tears, 
Though  none  can  see  me  weep :  alone  I  climb 
The  rugged  path  that  leads  me  out  of  time  — 
Out  of  time  and  out  of  all, 

Singing  yet  in  sun  and  rain, 
"  Heel  and  toe  from  dawn  to  dusk. 
Round  the  world  and  home  again. 

Farewell,  the  hope  that  mocked,  farewell  despair 

That  went  before  me  still  and  made  the  pace. 
The  earth  is  full  of  graves,  and  mine  was  there 

Before  my  life  began,  my  resting-place  ; 
And  I  shall  find  it  out  and  with  the  dead 
Lie  down  for  ever,  all  my  sayings  said. 
Deeds  all  done,  songs  all  simg. 

While  others  chant  in  sun  and  rain, 
"  Heel  and  toe  from  dawn  to  dusk. 
Round  the  world  and  home  again.*' 

JOHN   DAVIDSON. 


58  AMPHORA 

WHAT  is  the  use,  the  efficacy,  the  ultimate  good, 
of  such  work  as  Maeterlinck  gives  us  ?  This 
question  —  pertinent  enough  from  his  point  of  view  — 
is  sometimes  asked  by  the  practical  man  whose  ears 
are  either  not  trained  to  hear,  or  incapable  of  hearing, 
the  undertones  and  subtle  harmonies  which  surround 
him.  He  understands  the  utility  of  the  great  scientist 
—  from  such  work  he  can  perceive  manifest  gain  in 
discoveries,  inventions,  appliances  for  the  amelioration 
of  human  suffering,  additions  to  the  general  sum  of 
human  happiness  and  welfare.  He  can  appreciate  the 
utility  of  the  explorer  —  from  this  he  sees  new  coun- 
tries grow,  new  civilisations  extend,  new  industries 
form,  new  rivalries  come  into  being.  But  from  expo- 
nents of  ideals,  masters  of  the  written  word,  he 
discerns  no  particular  result,  save  that  they  may  serve 
to  charm  away  an  idle  hour.  To  argue  with  such  a 
man,  worthy  fellow  though  he  may  be,  is  dishearten- 
ing and  usually  unprofitable ;  it  is  as  though  one 
should  endeavour  to  explain  to  an  unmusical  person 
the  mysteries  of  Bach's  giant  fugue,  or  the  consummate 
beauty  of  Chopin's  nocturnes.  Occasionally,  however, 
he  may  be  brought  to  realise  that  there  are  experi- 
ences of  the  soul  in  quiet  hours  which  transcend  the 
joys  of  physical  action  or  the  pleasures  of  the  money 
market.  "  The  ground  of  a  man's  joy,"  said  R.  L. 
Stevenson,  "is  often  hard  to  hit  .  .  .  the  man's  true 
life,  for  which  he  consents  to  live,  may  lie  altogether 
in  the  field  of  fancy  "  —  a  statement  absolutely  and 
perfectly  accurate.  "  It  is  in  the  mind  that  the  ele- 
ments and  conditions  of  truth  and  beauty,  elswhere 
dispersed  and  sown  abroad,  are  brought  together  and 
blended  into  harmony."  Truly,  again,  does  Professor 
Caird  remark,  in  his  notable  essay  on  Goethe,  that 


AMPHORA  59 

"  poetic  truth  does  not  lie  on  the  surface  any  more 
than  scientific  truth  ;  the  poet  ignores  or  endeavours 
to  get  beyond  the  external  mechanism  of  the  world. 
The  poet,  like  the  philosopher,  is  in  search  of  a  deeper 
truth  in  things  than  that  which  is  the  object  of  sci- 
ence." The  difficulty,  of  course,  is  to  expound  this  to 
those  who  live  in  a  different  world  and  speak  a  differ- 
ent tongue.  MAETERLINCK  AND  HIS  ART. 
{The  Academy,  July  9,  iqio.) 

MY  BOOKS 

ON  level  lines  of  wooduork  stand 
Mv  books  obedient  to  nij  band ; 
And  Ccvsar  pale  against  the  icall 
Smiles  sternly  Roman  over  all. 
IVitbin  the  four  walls  of  this  room 
Life  finds  its  prison,  j>outh  its  tomb : 
For  here  the  minds  of  other  men 
Prompt  and  deride  the  labouring  pen  ; 
And  here  the  wisdom  of  the  wise 
Dances  like  motes  before  the  ej/es. 
Outside,  the  great  world  spins  its  way, 
Here  studious  night  dogs  studious  day. 
A  mighty  store  of  dusty  books, 
Little  and  great,  fill  all  the  nooks, 
And  line  the  walls  from  roof  to  floor  ; 
And  I  who  read  them  o'er  and  o'er, 
Am  I  much  wiser  than  of  old, 
IVhen  sunlight  leaped  like  living  gold 
Into  my  boyhood's  heart,  on  fire 
IVith  fervid  hope  and  wild  desire  ; 
And  when  behind  no  window  bars. 
But  free  as  air  I  served  the  stars  ? 

JUSTIN   HUNTLY    MCCARTHY. 


6o  AMPHORA 

JT  is  not  amid  the  bustle  of  the  live  senses,  but  in 
an  under-world  of  dead  impressions  that  Poetry 
works  her  will,  raising  that  in  power  which  was  sown 
in  weakness,  quickening  a  spiritual  body  from  the 
ashes  of  the  natural  body.  The  mind  of  man  is  peo- 
pled, like  some  silent  city,  with  a  sleeping  company 
of  reminiscences,  associations,  impressions,  attitudes, 
emotions,  to  be  awakened  into  fierce  activity  at  the 
touch  of  words.  By  one  way  or  another,  with  a  fan- 
faronade of  the  marching  trumpets,  or  stealthily,  by 
noiseless  passages  and  dark  posterns,  the  troop  of 
suggesters  enters  the  citadel,  to  do  its  work  within. 
The  procession  of  beautiful  sounds  that  is  a  poem 
passes  in  through  the  main  gate,  and  forthwith  the 
by-ways  resound  to  the  hurry  of  ghostly  feet,  until  the 
small  company  of  adventurers  is  well  nigh  lost  and 
overwhelmed  in  that  throng  of  insurgent  spirits. 

WALTER   RALEIGH. 

TO  MY  WIFE  WITH  A  COPY  OF  MY  POEMS 

I   CAN  write  no  stately  proem 
As  a  prelude  to  my  lay  ; 
From  a  poet  to  a  poem 
I  would  dare  to  say. 

For  if  of  these  fallen  petals 

One  to  you  seem  fair, 
Love  will  waft  it  till  it  settles 

On  your  hair. 

And  when  wind  and  winter  harden 

All  the  loveless  land, 
It  will  whisper  of  the  garden. 

You  will  understand. 

OSCAR   WILDE. 


AMPHORA  6i 

70  MY  WIFE 

TAKE,  dear,  my  little  sheaf  of  soitgs, 
For,  old  or  new. 
All  that  is  good  in  them  belongs 
Only  to  you  ; 

And,  singing  as  when  all  was  yotmg, 

They  will  recall 
Those  others,  lived  but  left  unsung — 

The  best  of  all. 

W.  E.  HENLEY. 


BUT  is  there  to  be  no  End  to  this  Purchase  of  Books  ? 
Oh  yes ;  and  let  us  see  when  it  is.  When  there 
have  been  redeemed  from  Time  all  the  valuable  intel- 
lectual Bequests  of  former  Ages ;  when  there  has  been 
garnered  up  all  that  preceding  Generations  had  amassed 
as  a  sacred  and  imperishable  Inheritance,  there  will 
then  remain  no  Duty  but  to  collect  what  the  Age  pro- 
duces. And  when  literary  Ambition  shall  cease  to  be 
excited ;  when  Genius  is  no  longer  bestowed  by  the 
Munificence  of  Heaven  ;  when  Industry  no  longer  col- 
lects new  Facts  respecting  Man  and  Nature ;  when  the 
forming  Hand  ceases  to  reproduce  ;  when  the  Streams 
of  human  Intellect  no  longer  flow  ;  when  the  Springs 
of  Intelligence  and  Thought  are  all  dried  up ;  when 
the  Regions  of  Science  and  of  Mind  sleep  in  universal 
Lethargy,  —  then  it  will  be  Time  to  give  over  buying 
Books. 

QUOTED   BY   REUBEN   A.   GUILD. 
{The  Librarian's  Manual,  1858.) 


62  AMPHORA 

A  PAG /IN  HYMN 

1HAVE  drunk  the  Sea^s  good  wine, 
And  to-daj> 
Care  has  bowed  his  head  and  gone  away. 
I  have  drunk  the  Sea's  good  wine, 
IVas  ever  step  so  light  as  mine, 
IVas  ever  heart  so  gaj>  ? 
Old  voices  intermingle  in  mj/  brain. 
Voices  that  a  little  boy  might  bear. 
And  dreams  like  fiery  sunsets  come  again, 
Informulate  and  vain. 
But  great  with  glories  of  the  buccaneer. 
Oh,  thanks  to  thee,  great  Mother,  thanks  to  thee. 
For  this  old  joy  renewed. 
For  tightened  sinew  and  clear  blood  imbued 
IVith  sunlight  and  with  sea. 
Behold,  I  sing  a  pagan  song  of  old, 
And  out  of  my  full  heart. 
Hold  forth  my  hands  that  so  I  would  enfold 
The  Infinite  thou  art. 

IVhat  matter  all  the  creeds  that  come  and  go, 
The  many  gods  of  men  ? 
My  blood  outcasts  them  from  its  joyous  flow, 
And  it  is  now  as  then  — 
The  Pearl  of  Morning,  and  the  Sapphire  Sea, 
The  Diamond  of  Noon, 
The  Ruby  of  the  Sunset  —  these  shall  be 
My  creed,  my  Deity  ; 
And  I  will  take  some  old  forgotten  tune, 
And  rhythm  frolic-free. 
And  sing  in  little  words  thy  wondrous  boon, 
O  Sunlight  and  O  Sea  ! 

JOHN    RUNCIE. 


AMPHORA  6s 

IN  what  does  the  plastic  beauty  of  a  book  consist  ? 
"  The  beauty  that  has  been  tracked  home  through 
the  suggestions  of  the  world  about  us,  the  beauty 
that  has  been  built  up  in  the  ardently  fostered  and 
anxiously  chastened  imagination  these,  singly  or  com- 
bined, form  the  subject-matter  of  all  arts  ;  but  the 
materials  that  embody  such  discovery  or  such  vision, 
they  also  have  individual  and  inherent  loveliness  :  they 
therefore  may  be  used  clumsily  and  against  the  grain, 
or  be  employed  with  that  intuitive  sensitiveness  that 
bespeaks  the  born  craftsman."  The  chief  beauty  for 
the  discovery  of  which  a  book  offers  a  field,  is  the 
most  abstract,  perhaps  the  most  essential,  of  all  those 
which  man  has  tracked  home:  beauty  of  proportion. 
Everyone  feels  the  impressiveness  of  Milton's  Adam : 
"  Fair  indeed,  and  tall  under  a  platan,"  since  Keats 
pointed  it  out.  A  tall  man,  a  lofty  tree,  the  relation 
between  them  has  power  over  us,  we  feel  its  beauty ; 
and  so  for  the  relation  between  the  blank  margins  and 
the  square  of  type,  or  between  blank  spaces  ruled  off 
by  lines,  a  trained  sense  has  a  quick  preference,  is 
impressed  by  austerity  in  one  proportion,  is  charmed 
by  others,  and  is  repelled  by  the  violation  of  its  senti- 
ment in  regard  to  them,  or  by  indifference  to  it. 

T.  STURGE  MOORE. 


FKW  of  man's  works  last  so  long  as  a  well-printed 
book.  Metal  rusts  and  corrodes,  stone  crum- 
bles, the  robes  of  kings  are  eaten  by  moths,  but  after 
four  hundred  years  a  printed  page  is  clear,  and  fresh, 
and  readable  as  at  first. 

F.   W.    MACDONALD. 


64  AMPHORA 

BALLADE  OF  THE  CAXTON  HEAD 

NEWS  !  Good  News !  at  the  oldj>ear^5  end 
Lovers  of  learning,  come  buj>,  come  buy, 
Now  to  old  Holhorn  let  bookmen  wend, 

Though  the  town  be  grimv,  and  grim  the  sky. 
News  !  Good  News  .'  is  our  Christmas  cry 
For  our  feast  of  reason  is  richly  spread : 
And  hungry  bookmen  may  turn  and  try 
The  famous  Sign  of  the  Caxton  Head. 

Let  moralists  talk  of  the  lifelong  friend : 

But  books  are  the  safest  of  friends,  say  I ! 
The  best  of  good  fellows  will  oft  offend : 

But  books  can  never  do  wrong :  for  why  ? 

To  their  lover^s  ear,  and  their  lover's  eye. 
They  are  ever  the  same  as  in  dear  years  fled : 

And  the  choicest  haunt,  till  you  bid  them  fly, 
The  famous  Sign  of  the  Caxton  Head. 

In  one  true  fellowship  let  them  blend! 

The  delicate  pages  of  Italy  ; 
Foulis  and  Baskerville,  bad  to  lend ; 

And  the  strong  black  letter  of  Germany  : 

Here  rare  French  wonders  of  beauty  lie, 
IVrought  by  the  daintiest  of  hands  long  dead, 

All  these  are  waiting,  til  I  you  draw  nigh 
The  famous  Sign  of  the  Caxton  Head. 

l'envoi 

Bookmen  !  whose  pleasures  can  never  die, 

IVhile  books  are  written,  and  books  are  read : 

For  the  honour  of  Caxton,  pass  not  by 
The  famous  Sign  of  the  Caxton  Head. 

LIONEL   JOHNSON. 


AMPHORA  65 

"THE  VISION  SPLENDID" 

IN  that  great  Ode  by  Wordsworth  which  first  saw  the 
light  in  print  one  hundred  and  five  years  ago,  and 
as  related  to  all  other  odes  in  the  English  language  is 
a  cedar  of  Lebanon  that  towers  above  all  otiier  trees 
of  the  valley,  are  these  great  lines :  — 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting  : 
The  Soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  Star, 

Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 
And  Cometh  from  afar  : 

Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 

And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 

From  God,  who  is  our  home  : 
Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy  ! 
Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  Boy, 
But  He  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy  ; 
The  Youth,  who  daily  farther  from  the  east 

Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  Priest, 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 

Is  on  his  way  attended  ; 
At  length  the  Man  perceives  it  die  away. 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

Is  it  then  a  foregone  conclusion  that  our  youthful 
awakening  must  in  the  nature  of  things  depart  or  can 
we,  as  the  poet  would  have  us  believe,  retain  and 
strengthen  "  these  shadowy  recollections  "  until  they 
assume  for  us  and  for  all  who  will  the  living  semblance 
of  "truths  that  wake,  to  perish  never?"  And  if  it 
indeed  be  so  how  may  we  best  lay  hold  upon  this 
wider  prospect  and  become  inheritors  of  the  Divine 
Vision  ?  It  seems  to  me  the  answer  is  very  clear  :  we 
may  have  part  and  parcel  in  "  the  years  that  bring  the 
philosophic  mind"  through  that  Idealism  which  came 


66  AMPHORA 

in  with  our  first  clothes,  and  through  Culture  evolved 
out  of  the  individual  initiative,  which  again,  in  the 
final  analysis,  is  Idealism  raised  to  its  highest  power. 

As  John  Addington  Symonds  tells  us.  Culture,  while 
one  of  the  "words  which  have  been  overworked"  may 
nevertheless  be  defined  "  as  the  raising  of  previously 
educated  intellectual  faculties  to  their  highest  potency 
by  the  conscious  effort  of  their  possessors."  We  who 
have  read  Whitman  attentively  know  that  he  did  not 
look  upon  "  culture  "  in  this  light :  but  as  Symonds 
acutely  remarks,  "his  arguments  .  .  .  are  directed 
against  the  vulgar  conception  of  culture,  as  an  imita- 
tive smattering,  a  self-assertiveness  of  so-called  culti- 
vated people."  Undoubtedly  both  men  were  agreed 
that 

Rhymes  and  rhymers  pass  away,  poems  distilled  from  poems  pass 

away ; 
The  swarms  of  reflectors  and  the  polite  pass,  and  leave  ashes  ; 
Admirers,  importers,  obedient  persons,  make  but  the  soil  of  litera- 
ture. 

And  concerning  Idealism  which  is  not  of  the  Schools 
either  to  confer  or  take  away,  but  which  a  liberal  edu- 
cation can  do  much  to  foster,  what  may  we  say  of  it 
save  that  it  is  the  underprop  of  any  possible  culture, 
the  prerequisite  basis  underlying  both  Art  and  Books  ? 
"  Literature,  so  long  as  it  be  idealistic,  is  the  anodyne 
of  the  spirit,  the  mother  of  faith,  the  nurse  of  hope  !  " 

You  recall  the  volume  of  Sophocles  that  was  found 
on  the  body  of  the  drowned  Shelley.  Many  of  us  have 
carried  about  memories  of  books  each  in  its  way  as 
infinitely  precious  as  this  book  was  to  the  dead  poet. 
It  is  the  province  of  Literature,  and  of  poetry  and 


AMPHORA  67 


impassioned  prose  especially,  to  fasten  themselves 
upon  us :  to  wind  their  way  into  our  heart  of  hearts, 
to  make  over  to  manhood  and  middle  age  and  at  last, 
—  if  it  needs  must  come  —  to  make  over  to  old  age 
even,  the  intellectual  deposits  of  the  sacred  Past. 

To  what  conclusion  would  I,  therefore,  bring  you  ? 
To  the  sole  viewpoint  I  had  in  mind,  the  "  one  thought 
ever  at  the  fore  "  in  the  work  I  offer :  that  in  it  all  and 
transfusing  it  all  should  be  somewhat  of  this  limitless 
vision — the  Vision  Splendid  which  does  not  fade 
away  1 

Rest  assured  in  Idealism  there  remains  an  abiding 
refuge  which  the  Soul  of  Man  has  ever  sought ;  that 
in  Idealism  alone  we  find  justified  and  made  perfect 
"  our  faith  in  the  incompleteness  of  the  world  as  we  see 
it,  and  in  the  ultimate  completeness  of  the  Divine  plan. 

*  *  * 

PREEXIS7ENCE 

1LAID  me  down  upon  the  shore 
And  dreamed  a  little  space  ; 
I  beard  the  great  waves  break  and  roar  ; 
The  sun  was  on  my  face. 

My  idle  hands  and  fingers  hrown 

Played  with  the  pebbles  grey  ; 
The  waves  came  up,  the  waves  went  down. 

Most' thundering  and  gay. 

The  pebbles,  they  were  smooth  and  round 

And  warm  upon  my  hands, 
Like  little  people  I  had  found 

Sitting  among  the  sands. 


68  AMPHORA 

The  grains  of  sand  so  shining-small 
Soft  through  nif  fingers  ran  ; 

The  sun  shone  down  upon  it  all, 
And  so  my  dream  began  : 

How  all  of  this  had  been  before  ; 

How  ages  far  awaj> 
I  lay  on  some  forgotten  shore 

/4s  here  I  lie  to-dajy. 

The  waves  came  shining  up  the  sands, 

As  here  to-daj>  they  shine  ; 
And  t)i  inj>  pre-pelasgian  hands 

The  sand  was  warm  and  fine. 

I  have  forgotten  whence  I  came. 

Or  what  w_y  home  might  be, 
Or  bj>  what  strange  and  savage  name 

I  called  that  thundering  sea- 

I  onlj'  know  the  sun  shone  down 

As  still  it  shines  to-day. 
And  in  my  fingers  long  and  brown 

The  little  pebbles  lay. 

FRANCES   CORNFORD. 


THE  man  of  business,  chancing  upon  some  verse, 
has  his  moment  of  illumination  and  regret  and 
shuts  the  book,  laughing  it  away.  The  poet  brought 
to  him  the  sense  of  the  mystic  word ;  the  poet  of  all 
men  has  the  power  of  passing  it  on. 

WILFRID   L.    RANDELL. 


AMPHORA  69 

WHETHER  he  be  Homer  the  nondescript,  Dante 
the  outcast,  Shakespeare  the  player,  or  Burns 
the  exciseman,  the  great  poet  is  always  a  man  apart, 
separated  out  by  his  genius,  and  by  some  tragic  cir- 
cumstance. He  may  have  to  extort  a  living  as  a 
mendicant ;  he  may  provide  for  himself  handsomely 
at  a  terrible  cost,  until  his  name  "  receives  a  brand," 
and  his  nature  is  almost  '"subdued  to  what  it  works 
in  ■' ;  or  he  may  die  of  a  broken  heart  gauging  whiskey- 
barrels  —  that  was  the  most  withering  tragedy  of  all : 
but  he  is  always  great,  always  an  imperial  person  ; 
he  may  be  neglected  and  despised  in  his  life-time,  but 
his  will  is  always  to  live,  his  will  is  always  set  on 
power,  his  empire  remains. 

JOHN    DAVIDSON. 


WHEN  finis  conies,  the  Book  we  close, 
And  somewhat  sad/j^,  Fancjf  goes, 
JVith  backward  step,  from  stage  to  stage 
Of  that  accomplished  pilgrimage,  .  .  . 
The  thorn  lies  thicker  than  the  rose  ! 

There  is  so  much  that  no  one  knows, — 
So  much  un-reached  that  none  suppose ; 

IVhat  flaws  !  what  faults  !  —  on  every  page. 
When  Finis  comes. 

Still,  —  they  must  pass  I  the  swift  Tide  flows. 

Though  not  for  all  the  laurel  grows, 
Perchance,  in  this  he-slandered  age, 
The  worker,  mainly,  wins  his  wage ;  — 

And  Time  will  sweep  both  friends  and  foes 
IVben  Finis  comes  ! 

AUSTIN   DOBSON. 


70  AMPHORA 

OPT/M/SAf 

IF  /,  not  ignorant  of  defeat  and  pain, 
IVonnded  hy  disenchantment,  torn  bj>  strife 
'Twixt  flesh  and  spirit,  and  the  laws  of  life, 
Ev'n  from  the  dust  can  raise  proud  hope  again, 
IVbere  hope  seemed  slain  : 

If,  caught  in  the  wild  clamour  of  our  day. 

That  builds  on  shattered  thought  its  crude  beliefs, 
And  noises  unto  heaven  a  thousand  griefs, 

I  learn  to  cherish  love,  and  haply  pray. 
Another  way : 

If,  somehow,  'neath  the  ugliness  that  springs 
From  passion,  and  futility,  and  toil, 
I  see  no  baneful,  beauteous  serpent  coil ; 

But  only  truth,  that  from  her  treasure  brings 
New  and  strange  things  : 

Be  patient,  O  poor  world,  when  from  your  wrongs 
I  turn  to  watch  the  dawn  with  rosy  light 
Stealing  upon  the  fastnesses  of  night ; 

And,  thrilled  by  faith,  whereto  all  joy  belongs 
Sing  these  glad  songs. 


DURING  a  brief  and  brilliant  period  the  splendour 
of  corporate  life  had  absorbed  the  life  of  the 
citizen;  an  Athenian  of  the  age  of  Pericles  may  have, 
for  the  moment,  found  Athens  all-sufficient  to  his  needs. 
With  the  decay  of  that  glory  it  became  plain  that  this 
single  life  was  insufficient,  that  it  failed  in  permanence 


AMPHORA  71 

and  simplicity.  We  all  dwell  in  a  single  native  country, 
the  universe,  said  Meleager,  expressing  a  feeling  that 
had  become  the  common  heritage  of  his  race.  But 
that  country,  as  men  saw  it,  was  but  ill  governed;  and 
in  nothing  more  so  than  in  the  rewards  and  punish- 
ments it  gave  its  citizens.  To  regard  it  as  the  vestibule 
only  of  another  country  where  life  should  have  its  intri- 
cacies simplified,  its  injustices  remedied,  its  evanescent 
beauty  fixed,  and  its  brief  joy  made  full,  became  an 
imperious  instinct  that  claimed  satisfaction,  through 
definite  religious  teaching  or  the  dreams  of  philosophy 
or  the  visions  of  poetry.  And  so  the  last  words  of 
Greek  sepulchral  poetry  express,  through  questions 
and  doubts,  in  metaphor  and  allegory,  the  final  belief 
in  some  blessedness  beyond  death.  Who  knows 
whether  to  live  be  not  death,  and  to  be  dead  life  .''  so 
the  haunting  hope  begins.  The  Master  of  the  Portico 
died  young;  does  he  sleep  in  the  quiet  embrace  of 
earth,  or  live  in  the  joy  of  the  other  world  ?  "  Even 
in  life  what  makes  each  one  of  us  to  be  what  we  are  is 
only  the  soul ;  and  when  we  are  dead,  the  bodies  of  the 
dead  are  rightly  said  to  be  our  shades  or  images ;  for 
the  true  and  immortal  being  of  each  one  of  us,  which 
is  called  the  soul,  goes  on  her  way  to  other  gods,  that 
before  them  she  may  give  an  account."  These  are  the 
final  words  left  to  men  by  that  superb  and  profound 
genius  the  dream  of  whose  youth  had  ended  in  the 
flawless  lines  whose  music  Shelley's  own  could  scarcely 
render: 

Thou  wert  the  Morning  Star  among  the  living 

Ere  thy  fair  light  was  fled  ; 
Now,  having  died,  thou  art  as  Hesperus,  giving 

New  splendour  to  the  dead. 

J.  W.  MACKAIL. 


72  AMPHORA 

SEA-lVfND 

THE/lesb  is  sad,  alas  !  and  all  the  books  arc  read. 
Flight,  onlj>  flight !    I  feel  that  birds  are  wild  to  tread 
The  floor  of  unknown  foam,  and  to  attain  the  skies  ! 
Nought,  neither  ancient  ga7-dens  mirrored  in  the  eyes. 
Shall  hold  this  heart  that  bathes  in  waters  its  delight, 

0  nights  !  nor  yet  my  waking  lamp,  whose  lonely  light 
Shadows  the  vacant  paper,  whiteness  profits  best. 

Nor  the  young  wife  who  rocks  her  baby  on  her  breast. 

1  will  depart.     O  steamer,  swaying  rope  and  spar. 
Lift  anchor  for  exotic  lands  that  lie  afar  ! 

A  weariness,  outworn  by  cruel  hopes,  still  clings 
To  the  last  farewell  handkerchief^  s  last  beckonings  ! 
And  are  not  these,  the  masts  inviting  storms,  not  these 
That  an  awakening  wind  bends  over  wrecking  seas. 
Lost,  not  a  sail,  a  sail,  a  flowering  isle,  ere  long? 
But,  O  my  heart,  hear  thou,  hear  thou  the  sailors'  song! 

ST^PHANE    MALLARM^. 
(Translated  by  Arthur  Symons.) 


IN  the  glens  of  Parnassus  there  are  hidden  flowers 
always  blooming You  will  find  that  youth 

does  not  vanish  with  the  rose,  that  you  need  never 
close  the  sweet-scented  manuscript  of  love,  science, 
art  or  literature.  In  them  youth  returns  like  daf- 
fodils that  come  before  the  swallow  dares,  and  take  the 
winds  of  March  with  beauty :  or  like  the  snapdragons 
which  Cardinal  Newman  saw  blossoming  on  the  wall 
at  Oxford,  and  which  became  for  him  the  symbol  of 
hope.  For  us  they  may  stand  as  the  symbol  of  real- 
ization and  the  immortality  of  the  human  intellect. 

ROBERT  ROSS. 


AMPHORA  73 

QuiNTUS  CuRTlus  tells  us  that,  in  certain  seasons, 
Bactria  was  darkened  by  whirlwinds  of  dust, 
which  completely  covered  and  concealed  the  roads. 
Left  thus  without  their  usual  landmarks,  the  wander- 
ers awaited  the  rising  of  the  stars,  —  "To  light  them 
on  their  dim  and  perilous  way."  May  we  not  say  the 
same  of  Literature  ?  From  time  to  time  its  pathways 
are  so  obscured  beneath  the  rubbish  of  the  age,  that 
many  a  footsore  pilgrim  complains  of  the  hidden 
route.  In  such  times  let  us  imitate  the  Bactrians  ;  let 
us  cease  to  look  upon  the  confusions  of  the  day,  and 
turning  our  gaze  upon  the  great  Immortals  who  have 
gone  before,  seek  guidance  from  their  light. 

GEORGE    HENRY    LEWES. 

SYDNEY  PICKERING 

["This   Booke,  my  Deare  Joy,  and  only  Felicity,  sweet  Sydney 
Pickering,  gave  me,  whom  I  utterly  love  and  adore." — Written 

IN  AN  OLD  EDITION  OF  CoWLEv's  PoEMS  ] 

THIS  is  the  hook  of  Sidney  Pickering, 
Mj>  sometime  Lover  and  my  always  King, 
IVbom  I  do  utterly  love  and  adore. 

Now  as  before. 

He  lived  at  Greenwich,  I  in  London  Town, 
And  both  we  lived  till  once  we  met  again. 

To  sight  mj>  vessel  slipping  swiftly  down, 
He  waited,  pacing  in  the  sun  or  rain, 
A  scholar,  folded  in  a  claret  gown. 

And  then  a  step,  a  hand  upon  the  latch. 

Some  trivial  gossip  in  the  half -lit  hall  — 
"  He  haunts  St.  James's  and  she  wears  a  patch,' ^ 


74  AMPHORA 

And  then  a  pause,  a  flush,  and  ended  all 

Such  talk  of  London  in  the  half-ltt  hall. 

Or  else  a  reading  from  this  very  hook  ; 

And  then  a  silence  where  the  reading  ceased ; 
A  word  or  two  about  the  verse  —  a  look 

Across  the  parlour,  and  a  riband  creased. 
No  more  of  Cowley  for  that  day  at  least. 

O  Sydney  Pickering,  bow  long  it  seemed 
From  Westminster  to  Greenwich  for  us  twain  ; 

But  life  itself  proves  shorter  than  we  dreamed, 
And  both  we  live  till  once  we  meet  again. 
My  vessel  slipping  to  the  mooring  chain. 

This  is  the  book  of  Sydney  Pickering, 
My  sometime  Lover  and  my  always  King, 
IVhom  I  do  utterly  love  and  adore. 
Now  as  before. 

VIOLA  TAYLOR. 


THE  present  is  in  every  age  merely  the  shifting  point 
at  which  past  and  future  meet,  and  we  can  have 
no  quarrel  with  either.  There  can  be  no  world  without 
traditions;  neither  can  there  be  any  life  without  move- 
ment. As  Heracleitus  knew  at  the  outset  of  modem 
philosophy,  we  cannot  bathe  twice  in  the  same  stream, 
though,  as  we  know  to-day,  the  stream  still  flows  in  an 
unending  circle.  There  is  never  a  moment  when  the 
new  dawn  is  not  breaking  over  the  earth,  and  never  a 
moment  when  the  sunset  ceases  to  die.  It  is  well  to 
greet  serenely  even  the  first  glimmer  of  the  dawn  when 
we  see  it,  not  hastening  towards  it  with  undue  .speed, 


AMPHORA  75 

nor  leaving  the  sunset  without  gratitude  for  the  dying 
light  that  once  was  dawn. 

In  the  moral  world  we  are  ourselves  the  light-bearers, 
and  the  cosmic  process  is  in  us  made  flesh.  For  a  brief 
space  it  is  granted  to  us,  if  we  will,  to  enlighten  the 
darkness  that  surrounds  our  path.  As  in  the  ancient 
torch-race,  which  seemed  to  Lucretius  to  be  the  symbol 
of  all  life,  we  press  forward  torch  in  hand  along  the 
course.  Soon  from  behind  comes  the  runner  who  will 
outpace  us.  All  our  skill  lies  in  giving  into  his  hand 
the  living  torch,  bright  and  unflickering,  as  we  ourselves 
disappear  in  the  darkness. 

HAVELOCK   ELLIS. 


FylLSE  POETS  AND  TRUE 

LOOK  bow  the  lark  soars  upward  and  is  gone, 
Turning  a  spirit  as  be  nears  tbe  sky  ! 
His  voice  is  beard,  but  bodjy  tbere  is  none 
To  fix  tbe  vague  excursions  of  tbe  eye. 
So,  poets'  songs  are  with  us,  thd"  tbey  die 
Obscured,  and  hid  by  deatFs  oblivious  shroud, 
And  Earth  inherits  tbe  rich  melody 
Like  raining  music  from  the  morning  cloud. 
Yet,  few  there  be  who  pipe  so  sweet  and  loud 
Their  voices  reach  us  through  tbe  lapse  of  space  ; 
The  noisy  day  is  deafen' d  by  a  crowd 
Of  undistinguisb'd  birds,  a  twittering  race  ; 
But  only  lark  and  nightingale  forlorn 
Fill  up  the  silences  of  night  and  morn. 

THOMAS    HOOD. 


76  AMPHORA 

OUR  last  word  on  poetry  cannot  be  said ;  nor  can 
our  first  discovery  of  poetry  ever  be  remade. 
Yet  it  is  just  in  so  far  as  we  can  get  near  this  double 
impossibility  that  the  poets  will  bear  to  us  their  full 
meaning.  Now  and  then  at  least,  if  we  read  poetry  as 
it  should  be  read,  the  reward  will  come,  it  may  be  with 
some  great  poem,  it  may  be  only  with  some  passage  or 
phrase,  of  entering  fully  and  freshly  into  it,  as  though 
we  read  it  for  the  first  time  and  as  though  it  gave  the 
meaning  of  life.  It  is  in  such  moments,  "solemn  and 
rare,"  that  poetry  performs  its  function  for  us  —  or 
rather,  that  we  perform  our  function  for  poetry : 

To  see  a  world  in  a  grain  of  sand, 

And  a  heaven  in  a  wild  flower, 
Hold  infinity  in  the  palm  of  your  hand, 

And  eternity  in  an  hour. 

To  attain  these  moments,  no  labour  is  wasted.  To 
communicate  them  is  the  glory  of  the  poets.  To  help 
towards  their  communication  is  the  highest  privilege, 
in  their  subsidiary  province,  of  the  exponents  of  poetry. 
For  criticism  is,  or  ought  to  be,  the  interpretation  of 
poetry  in  some  such  sense  as  poetry  is  itself  the  inter- 
pretation  of  life.  ^    ^^    mackail. 

I    HAVE  desired  to  go 
IVhere  springs  not  fail, 
To  fields  where  flies  no  sharp  and  sided  hail 
And  a  few  lilies  blow. 

And  I  have  asked  to  be 

IVhere  no  storms  come  ; 

IVhere  the  green  swell  is  in  the  havens  dumb. 

And  out  of  the  swing  of  the  sea. 

FATHER  GERARD  HOPKINS. 


AMPHORA  77 

ON  THE  FLY-LEAF  OF  THE  CREEK   ANTHOLOGY 

SEE,  but  the  urn  we  hold, 
Time-worn  and  thin, 
IVhere  there  was  life  of  old. 

Delicate  sin, 
Glorj>  and  love  grown  cold 
IVbite  ash  within. 

Here,  in  these  ashes  blent. 

Lovers  and  foes, 
Light  joy  and  sorrow  spent, 

Hushed  to  repose, 
Sleep  among  garlands  rent 

—  Laurel  and  rose. 

Only  the  fragrance  clings 

The  blossom  flies  — 
Echo  of  laughter  rings 

Sobbing  to  sighs. 
The  breath  of  dying  things 

Here  never  dies. 

DORA   G.    MCCHESNEY, 


WHILE  persons  count  for  much,  style,  the  index 
to  persons,  can  never  count  for  little.  "  Speak," 
it  has  been  said,  "that  I  may  know  you" — voice- 
gesture  is  more  than  feature.  Write,  and  after  you 
have  attained  to  some  control  over  the  instrument, 
you  write  yourself  down  whether  you  will  or  no. 
There  is  no  vice,  however  unconscious,  no  virtue, 
however  shy,  no  touch  of  meanness  or  of  generosity 
in  your  character,  that  will  not  pass  on  to  the  paper. 
You  anticipate  the  Day  of  Judgment  and  furnish  the 
recording  angel  with  material.     The  Art  of  Criticism 


78  AMPHORA 

in  Literature,  so  often  decried  and  given  a  subordinate 
place  among  the  arts,  is  none  other  than  the  art  of 
reading  and  interpreting  these  written  evidences. 
Criticism  has  been  popularly  opposed  to  creation, 
perhaps  because  the  kind  of  creation  that  it  attempts 
is  rarely  achieved,  and  so  the  world  forgets  that  the 
main  business  of  Criticism,  after  all,  is  not  to  legislate, 
nor  to  classify,  but  to  raise  the  dead.  Graves,  at  its 
command,  have  waked  their  sleepers,  oped,  and  let 
them  forth.  It  is  by  the  creative  power  of  this  art 
that  the  living  man  is  reconstructed  from  the  litter  of 
blurred  and  fragmentary  paper  documents  that  he  has 
left  to  posterity. 

WALTER    RALEIGH. 


DISTANT  AUTHORS 
"  Aqiii  cstii  encerrada  el  alma  licenciado  Pedro  Garcias  ' 

DEAR  books !  and  each  the  living  soul. 
Our  hearts  aver,  of  men  unseen, 
JVhose  power  to  strengthen,  charm,  control, 
Surmounts  all  earth's  green  miles  between. 

For  us  at  least  the  artists  show 
Apart  from  fret  of  work-days  jars : 

We  know  them  but  as  friends  may  know. 
Or  they  are  'known  beyond  the  stars. 

Their  mirth,  their  grief,  their  soul's  desire, 
IVhen  twilight  murmuring  of  streams. 

Or  skies  far  touched  by  sunset  fire, 
Exalt  them  to  pure  worlds  of  dreams  ; 


AMPHORA  79 


Their  love  of  good ;  their  rage  at  wrong ; 

Their  hours  when  struggling  thought  makes  way  ; 
Their  hours  when  fancy  drifts  to  song 

Lightly  and  glad  as  bird-trills  may  ; 

All  these  are  truths.     And  if  as  true 

More  graceless  scrutiny  that  reads, 
"  These  Jruits  amid  strange  husking  grew  ;" 

"  These  lilies  blossomed  amongst  weeds  ;  " 

Here  no  despoiling  doubts  shall  blow, 

No  fret  offend,  of  work-day  jars. 
We  know  them  but  as  friends  may  know. 

Or  they  are  known  beyond  the  stars. 

MARY    COLBORNE-VEEL. 


"SACRED  THINGS  NEVER  DIE" 

In  every  country  where  two  kinds  of  legal  money  are  in  circula- 
tion, the  bad  money  always  drives  out  the  good. 

SIR   THOMAS  GKBSHAM. 

IN  citing  what  is  known  to  students  of  Political 
Economy  as  Gresham's  Law  I  have  in  mind  a 
book  that  cannot  be  overpraised  for  its  Idealism, 
wherein  this  law  apparently  is  applied  to  Literature  in 
our  own  immediate  day  and  generation.  The  depth 
of  the  writer's  saturnine  humour  will  surely  come 
home  to  those  of  us  who,  like  the  heroine  of  Together, 
have  dallied  at  any  news-stand  in  any  one  of  "  the 
vast  eighteen  story  hotels  of  New  York,"  or  else- 
where. Here  is  what  we  cannot  choose  but  behold : 
"  Gay  little  books,  saucy  little  books,  cheap  little 
books,  pleasant  little  books, — all  making  their  bid  to 


8o  AMPHORA 

curtain  cells  in  the  giey  matter  of  these  sated  human 
beings !  A  literature  composed  chiefly  by  women  for 
women,  —  tons  of  wood  pulp,  miles  of  linen  covers, 
rivers  of  ink,  —  all  to  feed  the  prevailing  taste,  like 
the  ribbons,  the  jewels,  the  candy,  the  theatre  tickets ! " 
Precisely  I  Go  where  we  will  in  this  broad  land  of 
ours,  these  "  tons  of  wood  pulp,"  these  "  miles  of  linen 
covers"  confront  and  confound  us.  Shall  we  there- 
fore confess  judgment  and,  admitting  Mr.  Robert 
Herrick  to  be  in  the  right,  admit  also  that  this  pre- 
sentment of  his  is  I  he  ultimate  outcome  of  Democracy 
in  its  literary  uplift  ?  Well,  speaking  for  myself,  I  do 
not  believe  Mr.  Herrick,  even  for  a  moment,  so  con- 
siders it.  Like  a  good  physician  he  first  makes  sure 
of  his  diagnosis.  These  are  the  symptoms:  the 
remedy,  if  such  there  be,  "is  all  within."  For  cure, 
(and  I  accept  his  entire  novel  as  an  argument  of  pas- 
sionate intensity  in  favour  of  "  a  new  light,  a  new 
life,")  the  real  cure  comes  from  what  you  and  I, 
meaning  all  who  are  of  like-mindedness,  may  do  to 
set  in  motion  and  sustain  a  higher  law  than  that  con- 
trolling a  mere  monetary  currency.  Even  in  the 
worst  reactionary  period  do  you  and  I  seriously  believe 
there  ever  was  any  actual  danger  of  the  higher  being 
driven  out  by  the  lower  intellectual  coinage  ?  The 
currency  of  the  Soul,  conceivably,  is  of  another  order 
and  of  a  substance  more  enduring,  —  more  excellent! 

"  Be   not   discouraged,   keep    on,   there    are    divine    things   well 

envelop'd, 
I  swear  to  you  there  are  divine  things  more  beautiful  than  words 

can  tell." 

There  is,  then,  no  Gresham's  Law  prevailing  in  the 
realm  of  Books  :  say,  rather,  in  he  audit  of  the  years 


AMPHORA  8i 

the  base  and  the  bad  find  their  own  place ;  the  words 
of  the  Spirit  are  the  only  inevitable  rulers  of  "  that 
little  infinite  thing"  the  Soul  of  Man.  In  a  passage 
doubtless  very  familiar  but  which  cannot  be  too  often 
quoted,  Emerson  transcribes  what,  for  him  and  for 
many  another  gone  before  him,  must  have  been  an 
actual  experience :  "  The  young  mortal  enters  the  hall 
of  the  firma77tent :  he  is  alone  xuith  them  [the  gods'\  alone, 
they  pouring  on  him  betiedictions  a7id  gifts,  and  beckon- 
ing  him  up  to  their  thrones.  On  the  instant,  and 
incessatitly,  fall  snow-storms  of  illusions.  He  fancies 
himself  in  a  vast  croxvd  which  sways  this  way  and  that, 
and  whose  movements  and  doings  he  must  obey ;  he 
fancies  himself  poor,  orphaned,  insignifcatit.  .  .  . 
Every  mo>?tejtt  new  changes,  and  new  showers  of  decep- 
tions, to  baffle  and  distract  him.  And  when,  by-and-by, 
for  an  itistant,  the  air  clears,  and  the  cloud  lifts  a  little, 
there  are  the  gods  still  sitti^ig  around  him  on  their 
thrones,  —  they  alone  with  hitn  alone^'' 

I  do  not  know  if  this  has  been  used  before  as  an 
illustration  of  what  arises  in  one's  mind  at  the  outset 
of -literary  study:  the  perturbation,  the  seeming 
incoherence,  the  planless,  pathless  jungle  one  must 
encounter  on  his  way  to  the  Light.  Even  so  these 
are  the  conditions  and  the  reward,  —  if  we  press  on  to 
the  Reality  beyond  all  veils  of  outer  Seeming,  —  in 
that  vision  of  the  Abiding  Ones :  they  alone  with  us 
alone  ! 

Such  is  the  thought  impressing  itself  as  a  finality, 
and  such  the  words  which  I  adopt  as  my  title :  Sacred 
things  never  die.  Not  illusions,  and  not  death,  "but 
always  a  new  world,  a  new  light,  a  new  life  ; "  realities 
you  and  I  are  finding  all  around  us.  And  in  the  last 
analysis  of  our  beliefs,  there  remains  for  us  a  divine 


82  AMPHORA 

law  of  Joy  and  Peace  summed  and  sealed  up  in  a 
single  word :  "  Ecstasy,  the  secret  behind  the  stars, 
beyond  the  verge  of  the  sea,  in  the  great  lunar  spaces 
of  the  spirit." 

"  And  I  saw  that  there  was  an  Ocean  of  Darkness 
and  Death  :  but  an  infinite  Ocean  of  Light  and  Love 
flowed  over  the  Ocean  of  Darkness  :  and  in  that  I  saw 
the  i?ifinite  Love  of  God." 


THE   CRUrSKEEN  LAWN 

TAKE  it  Up  and  drink  of  it, 
In  it  lies 
Music  of  old  melodies, 
Irish  love  and  wit ; 
If  the  pathos  of  a  tear. 
If  the  shadow  of  a  sigh 
Rest  upon  its  rim, 
'Tis  the  retrospective  tear, 
'  T  is  the  long  regretful  sigh 
For  the  ages  dim. 

Take  it  up  and  drink  of  it 

Deep  and  long, 

Until  Muirne's  "  sleepy  song  " 

Charm  j'ou  bit  by  bit. 

Bright  with  colours  of  the  dawn, 

Gems  of  ancient  history 

Light  it  through  and  through  ; 

And  this  wondrous  Cruiskeen  Lawn 

Holds  the  Pearl  of  Poesj', 

Love-dissolved  for  vou. 


L.    A.    C. 


AMPHORA  83 

YES,  do  yeu  send  me  a  book  for  my  birthday.  Not 
a  bargain  book  bought  from  a  haberdasher,  but 
a  beautiful  book,  a  book  to  caress  —  pecuHar,  distinc- 
tive, individual:  a  book  that  hath  first  caught  your 
eye  and  then  pleased  your  fancy  ;  written  by  an  author 
with  a  tender  whim,  all  right  out  of  his  heart.  We 
will  read  it  together  in  the  gloaming,  and  when  the 
gathering  dusk  doth  blur  the  page,  we  '11  sit  with 
hearts  too  full  for  speech  and  think  it  over. 

DOROTHY  WORDSWORTH. 


ALL    THINGS 

NOTHING  is  ours.     For  an  impassioned  moment 
We  hold  our  blessings,  but  to  give  away  : 
All,  all  must  go  :  the  fairest  flowers  and  frailest. 
In  our  hot  holding  wither  and  decaj>. 

Nothing  is  ours.     The  joyous  rose  -souled  baby 
Pursues  the  laughing  years  to  sordid  hells 
Of  worldliness  :  foul  smoke  and  clutching  mammon 
Devour  the  edges  of  the  rolling  fells. 

Nothing  is  ours.     Love  wastes  to  futile  passion  ; 
Beauty,  to  shame ;  and  honour,  to  a  word ; 
Might,  to  a  shadow  ;  goodness,  to  a  maxim  ; 
And  lovely  toil  becomes  a  bitter  lord. 

"  All  things  are  yours  > "   The  cry  of  God  makes  answer, 
Sweeping  in  love  through  earth  and  sea  and  sky  : 
"  Might,  goodness,  honour ;  love  and  toil  and  childhood. 
Pass  to  the  Eternal  Beauty,  which  am  I." 

ELIZABETH    GIBSON. 


84  AMPHORA 

fN  WHAT  I^ALE? 

WHEN  sieep  is  with  the  lily, 
And  death  is  on  the  rose, 
Ah,  whither  speeds  their  perfume  .? 
And  where  their  beauty  goes 
IVho  knows  ? 

IVhen  song  has  quit  the  swallow, 

And  laughter  left  the  wren  ; 
IVhen  all  the  laugh,  the  singing. 

Has  faded  down  the  glen  ; 
IVhat  then .? 

So,  when  our  words  are  faded. 
And  dumb  what  each  one  saith, 

IVhere  rings  the  crv  we  uttered. 
Where  sighs  our  kissing  breath 
In  death  ? 

lOLO    ANEURIN    WILLIAMS. 


WHEN  we  speak  of  the  poetry  of  any  age,  or  of 
any  poet,  as  artificial,  we  perhaps  hardly  realise 
how  fragile  and  how^  artificial  all  poetry  is.  Its  abiding 
life  is  not  here.  It  never  continues  in  one  stay.  Its 
embodiments  are  transitory,  and  its  light  has  no 
sooner  touched  any  one  point  than  it  begins,  in  the 
same  movement,  to  glide  off  it.  The  images  of  per- 
fection which  it  successively  condenses  from  the  flying 
vapours  of  the  world  have  only  a  transcendental  per- 
manence ;  w'e  can  see  them  forming  and  melting  in 
one  and  the  same  breath.  In  the  earlier  Alexandrian 
poetry  we  can  just  catch  a  last  condensation  of  the 
Hellenic  genius,  a  gleam  of  the  old  light  before  the 


AMPHORA  8s 

chill  came  with  sunset  and  the  eastward-wheeling 
earth  drove  the  shadow  up  the  wall.  With  the  later 
poets  of  the  school  the  light  gradually  and  surely 
disappears.  Morning  was  kindling  elsewhere,  and  at 
last  they  were  left  with  the  night. 

J.    W.    MACKAIL. 

EVERYTHING  has  an  ending:  there  will  he 
r     An  ending  one  sad  day  for  you  and  me. 
An  ending  of  the  days  we  had  together. 
The  good  companionship  all  kinds  of  weather. 
The  cross-roads  yet  shall  be  where  we  must  part, 
We  who  are  soul  to  soul,  and  heart  to  heart. 

Then  one  of  us  will  look  back  to  these  days, 
These  days  that  now  we  hold  so  lightly,  praise 
So  little  that  we  often  wish  them  over. 
Ob,  our  lost  country  smiling  past  recover, 
How  heavenly  will  it  gleam  to  me,  to  you. 
The  lost  land  where  there  was  not  one,  but  two  ! 

The  darkness  gathers ;  all  things  have  an  end; 

Even  our  days  together,  lover,  friend. 

But,  oh,  my  darling,  lest  we  die  of  grieving. 

Let  us  take  bold  on  comfort,  warm  and  living. 

That  somewhere  past  the  grave's  night  and  the  cold, 

We  two  shall  be  together,  as  of  old. 

Let  us  take  hold  in  comfort  ere  that^  day 
When  one  of  us  must  go  and  one  must  stay  — 
We  two  who  never  could  endure  being  parted, 
Let  us  take  hold  on  comfort,  golden-hearted. 
That  lovers  meet  at  last  and  clasp  and  kiss. 
And  there  are  no  more  endings  where  that  is. 

KATHARINE  TYNAN    HINKSON. 


86  AMPHORA 


A  BALLADE  OF  A  BOOK  OF  HOURS 

WAS  tt  some  sad-eyed  Florentine 
IVithin  bis  cloistered  cell  of  yore 
IVho  lit  this  painted  page  of  thine 
With  treasures  from  his  ancient  lore, 
/Ind  kneeling  in  the  twilight  bore 
The  burden  of  his  Saviour's  pain, 
And  ever  with  the  stmrise  saw 
The  coming  of  his  Lord  again  ? 

And  when  he  found  the  rest  he  sought, 
The  shadows  that  he  hungered  for. 

Perchance  a  ladjy  of  the  Court 
IVithin  her  jewelled  bosom  wore  ■ 

His  book  among  her  billets,  or 
Beneath  her  scented  pillow  lain, 
IV ho  dailj!  in  her  life  foreswore 

The  coming  of  his  Lord  again. 

And  now  beneath  another  sky. 
Amid  the  citjr's  ceaseless  roar 

Unheeded  but  for  such  as  I, 
You  wait  upon  a  shelf  before 
A  dark  and  dusty  bookshop's  door, 

And  long  for  loving  hands  in  vain. 
As  he  in  that  dim  corridor, 

The  coming  of  his  Lord  again. 


Book,  as  my  lady's  monitor, 

Yon  shall  forget  the  world's  disdain, 
So  hadyour  master  sighed  no  more 

The  coming  of  his  Lord  again. 


AMPHORA  87 

IN  that  vast  cemetery,  called  the  Past,  are  most  of 
the  religions  of  men,  and  there,  too,  are  nearly  all 
their  gods.  The  sacred  temples  of  India  were  ruins 
long  ago.  Over  column  and  cornice  ;  over  the  painted 
and  pictured  walls,  cling  and  creep  the  trailing  vines. 
Brahma,  the  golden,  with  four  heads,  and  four  arms ; 
Vishnu,  the  sombre,  the  punisher  of  the  wicked,  with 
his  three  eyes,  his  crescent,  and  his  necklace  of  skulls  ; 
Siva,  the  destroyer,  red  with  seas  of  blood ;  Kali,  the 
goddess,  Draupadi,  the  white-armed,  and  Chrishna, 
the  Christ,  all  passed  away  and  left  the  thrones  of 
heaven  desolate.  Along  the  banks  of  the  sacred 
Nile,  Isis  no  longer  wandering  weeps,  searching  for 
the  dead  Osiris.  The  shadow  of  Typhon's  scowl  falls 
no  more  upon  the  waves.  The  sun  rises  as  of  yore, 
and  his  golden  beams  still  smite  the  lips  of  Memnon, 
but  Memnon  is  as  voiceless  as  the  Sphinx.  The 
sacred  fanes  are  lost  in  desert  sands  ;  the  dusty  mum- 
mies are  still  waiting  for  the  resurrection  promised  by 
their  priests,  and  the  old  beliefs,  wrought  in  curiously 
sculptured  stone,  sleep  in  the  mystery  of  a  language 
lost  and  dead.  Odin,  the  author  of  life  and  soul, 
Vili  and  Ve,  and  the  mighty  giant  Ymir,  strode  long 
ago  from  the  icy  halls  of  the  North ;  and  Thor,  with 
iron  glove  and  glittering  hammer,  dashes  mountains 
to  the  earth  no  more.  Broken  are  the  circles,  and 
cromlechs  of  the  ancient  Druids ;  fallen  upon  the 
summits  of  the  hills,  and  covered  with  the  centuries' 
moss,  are  the  sacred  cairns.  The  divine  fires  of 
Persia  and  of  the  Aztecs,  have  died  out  in  the  ashes 
of  the  past,  and  there  is  none  to  rekindle,  and  none  to 
feed  the  holy  flames.  The  harp  of  Orpheus  is  still ; 
the  drained  cup  of  Bacchus  has  been  thrown  aside ; 
Venus  lies  dead  in  stone,  and  her  white  bosom  heaves 


88  AMPHORA 

no  more  with  love.  The  streams  still  murmur,  but  no 
naiads  bathe  ;  the  trees  still  wave,  but  in  the  forest 
aisles  no  dryads  dance.  The  gods  have  flown  from 
high  Olympus.  Not  even  the  beautiful  women  can 
lure  them  back,  and  even  Danse  lies  unnoticed,  naked 
to  the  stars.  Hushed  forever  are  the  thunders  of 
Sinai;  lost  are  the  voices  of  the  prophets,  and  the 
land,  once  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  is  but  a  desert 
waste.  One  by  one,  the  myths  have  faded  from  the 
clouds ;  one  by  one,  the  phantom  host  has  disappeared, 
and  one  by  one,  facts,  truths  and  realities  have  taken 
their  places.  The  supernatural  has  almost  gone,  but 
the  natural  remains.  The  gods  have  fled,  but  man  is 
here. 

ROBERT   G.    INGERSOLL. 


ro  LUCY 

O  BEAUTY,  /  have  wandered  far  ; 
Peace,  I  have  suffered  seeking  thee : 
Life,  I  have  sought  to  see  thy  star 
That  other  men  might  see. 

And  after  wandering  nights  and  days, 
A  gleam  in  a  beloved  soul 
Shows  bow  life's  elemental  bla^e 

Goes  wandering  through  the  whole. 

Bearing  the  discipline  of  earth 
That  earth,  controlled,  may  bring  forth  flowers. 
O  may  our  labours  help  the  birth 
Of  nobler  souls  than  ours. 

JOHN   MASEFIELD. 


AMPHORA  89 

OLD  MORTALITY 

WHITE  violet  garlands,  Sprian  myrrh, 
Deep  roseate  cups  of  Cbian  wine. 
Sounds  that  four  deepest  being  stir, 
Sleek  limbs  that  shine, — 

Ah!  take  them,  Youth,  for  youth' s  fair  sake  ;  — 

Yet,  not  forgetting  human  hap  : 
The  wreath  may  fade,  the  nard-box  break. 

The  lyre-string  snap- 
Ease,  bliss,  and  beauty,  which  beget 
A  sensual  faith  in  things  that  be. 
Are  like  a  blossoming  garden  set 
Down  by  the  sea. 

They  flourish,  till  some  night-wind  blows 

The  swelling  tide  across  the  land, 
And  buries  tulip,  pink,  and  rose 
In  salt  and  sand. 

Since,  tho'  the  slow  receding  tide 

IVithdraw  its  froth  and  crawling  things, 
Yet,  where  that  wandering  wave  hath  sighed. 
No  fresh  bloom  springs. 

EDMUND    GOSSE. 

WHEN  I  speak  of  Criticism  I  have  in  mind  not 
merely  the  more  or  less  deft  use  of  commentary 
or  indication,  but  one  of  the  several  ways  of  literature, 
and  in  itself  a  rare  and  fine  art :  the  marriage  of 
science  that  knows  and  of  spirit  that  discerns.  The 
basis  of  Criticism  is  imagination,  its  spiritual  quality 
is  simplicity,  its  intellectual  distinction  is  balance. 

WILLIAM    SHARP. 


go  AMPHORA 

SUNSET 

TEN  thousand  fears  ago,  majyie, 
The  sense  forlorn  now  fallen  on  me 
Of  alien  light  and  of  the  wide 
Indifferent  calm  of  evening  tide, 
Troubled  no  less  the  soul  of  one 
IVho  standing  here  at  set  of  sun 
Looked  forth  upon  the  dajf's  decline 
With  grief  as  wild  and  strange  as  mine. 

And  baph  with  a  selfsame  sense 
Another  climbing  long  vears  hence 
Bv  well-known  ways  to  this  green  height 
IVhilej'et  the  west  is  filled  with  light, 
Shall  watch,  forlorn  of  soul  as  I, 
The  streaming  glories  pass  him  bf 
And  as  the  great  sun  disappears 
Be  moved,  he  knows  not  whj/,  to  tears. 

W.    G.   HOLE. 


FOR  the  actual  Shakespeare,  we  have  the  key  of  the 
Sonnets  —  if  we  were  sure  how  to  fit  it  into  the 
lock  —  and  we  have  Shakespeare's  women.  But  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  rise  before  us,  as  they  rose  before 
the  awakening  consciousness  of  Ilellas  two  thousand 
five  hundred  years  ago,  like  islands  out  of  an  unplumbed 
sea. 

From  that  same  sea,  long  afterwards,  through  stages 
of  which  we  can,  with  the  modern  armament  of 
scholarship,  dimly  trace  the  rough  outline,  rose  what 
we  know  as  Greece,  the  Hellenic  art,  thought,  life. 
The  Iliad  and  Odyssey  had,  we  may  say  confidently, 
assumed  their  form  before  then :    before  the  Peisis- 


AMPHORA  91 

trataen  recension,  before  the  age  of  the  earlier  Greek 
lyric  poets,  before  the  beginning  of  authorised  chro- 
nology. This  assumption  of  form,  which  in  the  main 
issue  made  them  what  they  are,  was  the  work  in  each 
case  of  a  certain  poet  of  supreme  genius.  It  is  with  the 
poems  themselves,  not  with  the  material  out  of  which 
they  were  shaped  or  the  stages  and  processes  of  the 
shaping,  that  we  have  to  do  when  we  are  considering 
poetry  as  a  function  of  life.  The  earlier  attempts  to 
dissect  either  poem  are  now  realised  to  have  missed 
the  main  point.  Later  analysis,  more  skilful  and 
better  informed,  has  but  little  to  do  with  the  nature 
and  progress  of  poetry.  The  Iliad  and  Odyssey  are 
not  rhapsodies  in  the  obvious  sense  of  that  word, 
although  they  imply  the  work  of  rhapsodes.  The 
complex  product  (this  cannot  be  repeated  too  often)  is 
analogous  to  a  chemical  rather  than  to  a  mechanical 
combination.  But  it  is  equally  essential  to  remember 
that  even  the  chemical  analogy  is  far  short  of  the 
truth.  We  have  to  do  with  life.  Both  poems  are 
vital  organisms,  and  their  growth  was  organic,  whether 
we  regard  it  as  the  slow  age-long  deposit  of  some 
coral  forest  under  the  sea,  or  as  the  bursting  into 
flower,  in  a  single  lifetime,  of  what  had  been  long 
maturing  invisibly  in  root  and  stem  and  bud.  In  either 
case  they  are  the  final  transformation  in  the  life  and 
growth  of  a  poetry  which  must  have  been  living  and 
growing  for  generations.  The  old  careless  view,  due 
partly  to  ignorance  and  partly  to  misunderstanding  of 
ambiguous  terms,  that  they  represent  the  birth  of 
poetry  in  some  fancied  youth  of  the  world,  is  as  nearly 
as  may  be  the  reverse  of  the  truth.  They  are  not  the 
birth  of  poetry;  they  are  its  full  maturity,  just  before, 
in  that  particular  form,  poetry  ceased  to  live  and  to 


92  AMPHORA 

interpret  life.  And  the  same  is  true  of  all  the  greatest 
poetry,  as  it  is  true,  even  more  widely,  of  all  the 
greatest  art.  Poetry  itself,  art  itself,  is  indeed 
immortal.  But  its  progress  passes  from  one  to  another 
manifestation.  We  speak  locally  of  sunrise  and  sun- 
set, but  over  the  world  as  a  whole  the  sun  is  always 
rising  and  always  setting.  And  when  art  fulfils  itself, 
it  is  on  the  point  of  passing  on  elsewhither,  of  dismis- 
sing its  finished  task  and  seeking  a  new  world  to 
conquer  and  transform.  For  the  age  and  country  in 
which  they  came  into  being,  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
represent  not  sunrise  but  sunset,  though  to  us,  further 
towards  the  darkening  west  ....  they  appear  to  be 
coloured  with  morning  glories,  to  lie  far  off  towards 
the  sunrise  and  the  dawn. 

J.    W.    MACKAIL. 
MAY-MUSrC 

OH !  lose  the  winter  from  thine  heart,  the  darkness 
from  thine  ejyes, 
And  from  the  low  hearth-chair  of  dreams,  mj>  Love-o'- 

May,  arise ; 
y4nd  let  the  maidens  robe  thee  like  a  white  white-lilac  tree. 
Oh!  Hear  the  call  of  Spring,  fair  Soul,  —  and  wilt  thou 
come  with  me  ? 

Even  so,  and  even  so  ! 
Whither  thou  goest,  I  will  go. 
I  would  follow  thee. 

Then  wilt  thou  see  the  orange  trees  star-flowering  aver 

Spain, 
Or  arched  and  mounded  Kaiser-towns  that  moulder  mid 

y4lmain. 


AMPHORA  93 

Or  through  the  cypress-gardens  go  of  magic  Italy  ? 
Oh  !  East  or  IVest  or  South  or  North,  saj>,  wilt  thou  come 
with  me  ? 

Even  so,  or  even  so  ! 
Whither  thou  goest,  I  will  go. 
I  will  follow  thee. 

But  wilt  thou  farther  come  with  me  through  hawthorn  red 

and  white 
Until  we  find  the  wall  that  hides  the  Land  of  Heart's 

delight  ? 
The  gates  all  carved  with  olden  things  are  strange  and 

dread  to  see : 
But  I  will  lift  thee  through,  fair  Soul.    Arise  and  come 

with  me  ! 

Even  so,  Love,  even  so  ! 
Whither  thou  goest,  I  will  go! 
Lo,  I  follow  thee. 

RACHEL   ANNAND  TAYLOR. 


BUT  it  is  at  night,  and  after  dinner,  that  the  best 
hour  comes.  There  are  no  such  pipes  to  be 
smoked  as  those  that  follow  a  good  day's  march  ;  the 
flavour  of  the  tobacco  is  a  thing  to  be  remembered,  it 
is  so  dry  and  aromatic,  so  full  and  so  fine.  If  you 
wind  up  the  evening  with  grog,  you  will  own  there 
was  never  such  grog ;  at  every  sip  a  jocund  tranquillity 
spreads  about  your  limbs,  and  sits  easily  in  your  heart. 
If  you  read  a  book  —  and  you  will  never  do  so  save 
by  fits  and  starts  —  you  find  the  language  strangely 
racy  and   harmonious ;   words   take   a  new  meaning ; 


94 


AMPHORA 


single  sentences  possess  the  ear  for  half  an  hour 
together;  and  the  writer  endears  himself  to  you,  at 
every  page,  by  the  nicest  coincidence  of  sentiment.  It 
seems  as  if  it  were  a  book  you  had  written  yourself  in 
a  dream.  To  all  we  have  read  on  such  occasions  we 
look  back  with  special  favour.  "It  was  on  the  loth 
of  April,  1798,"  says  Hazlitt,  with  amorous  precision, 
"  that  I  sat  down  to  a  volume  of  the  new  '  Heloise,' 
at  the  Inn  at  Llangollen,  over  a  bottle  of  sherry  and  a 
cold  chicken."  I  should  wish  to  quote  more,  for 
though  we  are  mighty  fine  fellows  nowadays,  we  can- 
not write  like  Hazlitt.  And,  talking  of  that,  a  volume 
of  Hazlitt's  essays  would  be  a  capital  pocket-book  on 
such  a  journey ;  so  would  a  volume  of  Heine's  songs ; 
and  for  "  Tristram  Shandy  "  I  can  pledge  a  fair  expe- 
rience. 

ROBERT    LOUIS    STEVENSON. 


ARS   VIC7R1X 

YES  ;  when  the  wajys  oppose  — 
When  the  hard  means  rebel. 
Fairer  the  work  out- grows, — 
More  potent  far  the  spell. 

O  Poet,  then,  forbear 

The  loosely  sandalled  verse, 
Choose  rather  thou  to  wear 

The  buskin  —  strait  and  terse  ; 

Leave  to  the  tjrro's  hand 

The  limp  and  shapeless  stvle  ; 

See  that  thy  form  demand 
The  labour  of  the  file. 


AMPHORA  95 

Sculptor,  do  thou  discard 

The  yielding  clay, —  consign 
To  Paros  marble  hard 

The  beauty  of  thy  line  ;  — 

Model  thv  Satyr's  face 

For  bronze  of  Syracuse  ; 
In  the  veined  agate  trace 

The  profile  of  thy  Muse. 

Painter,  that  still  must  mix 

But  transient  tints  anew. 
Thou  in  the  furnace  fix 

The  firm  enamel's  hue  ; 

Let  the  smooth  tile  receive 
Thy  dove-drawn  Erycine  ; 
Thy  sirens  blue  at  eve 
Coiled  in  a  wash  of  wine. 

All  passes.    Art  alone 

Enduring  stays  to  us  ; 
The  bust  outlasts  the  throtte, — 

The  coin,  Tiberius  ; 

Even  the  gods  must  go  ; 

Only  the  lofty  rhyme 
Not  countless  years  o'erthrow, — 

Not  long  array  of  time. 

Paint,  chisel,  then,  or  write  ; 

But,  that  the  work  surpass, 
IVith  the  hard  fashion  fight, — 

IVith  the  resisting  mass. 

AUSTIN    DOBSON. 
(From  Th^ophile  Gautier.) 


96  AMPHORA 

"THE  GREAT  COMPANIONS" 

Allons !  after  the  great  Companions,  and  to  belong  to  them  !  .  .  .  . 
They  go  !  they  go  !     1  know  that  they  go,  but  I  know  not  where  they  go, 
But  I  know  that  they  go  toward  the  best  —  toward  something  great. 

WALT    WHITMAN. 

RECENTLY  much  has  been  heard  of  the  three  or  five 
foot  shelf  of  books,  which,  perused  with  dili- 
gence, possibly  would  lead  on  to  the  liberal  education 
that  has  been,  presumably,  beyond  reach  of  the  aver- 
age man  and  woman  in  America.  We  are  reminded 
also  of  the  Best  Hundred  Books  which  came  at  an 
earlier  period  and  did  so  much  for  the  publisher  and 
so  little  for  those  who  pinned  their  faith  to  this  crass 
method  of  laying  hold  upon  the  intellectual  treasure- 
trove  of  the  ages.  These  rough  and  ready  schemes 
undoubtedly  keep  the  word  of  promise  to  the  ear : 
whether  they  do  not  succeed  in  breaking  it  to  the 
heart  is  a  question  that  I  for  one  rather  leave  open  or 
frankly  dispute. 

In  other  words,  I  do  not  believe  that  all  the  systems 
of  culture  in  the  world  can  bring  either  you  or  me  into 
touch  with  literature  unless  there  are  associations  of 
ideas  slowly  developed  and,  if  I  must  say  so,  subject 
to  spiritual  laws  almost  impossible  of  definition. 
What  were  the  first  books,  the  first  poems  that  at- 
tracted us .''  Again,  speaking  for  myself,  I  say  those 
chosen  at  haphazard,  the  chance  acquaintance  one 
might  conceivably  form  in  the  winding  and  not  very 
reputable  byways  of  an  old  city  —  of  Bookland.  I 
once  mentioned  how  I  came  to  the  appreciation  of 
Virgil,  or  what  for  the  most  of  us  is  all  we  can  know 
of  Virgil  —  in  translation.  It  was  chance,  but  the 
time  was  ripe  for  it,  that  first  brought  me  within  hail 


AMPHORA  97 

of  that  wonderful  drift-heap  of  three  centuries  known 
as  Old  Plays.  The  same  applies  to  almost  everything 
else  absorbed  from  books  that  I  have  endeavoured  to 
make,over  to  others. 

Of  old  it  was  said,  memory  draws  from  a  deep  well : 
within  us,  waiting  to  emerge,  a  chance  touch  may  reveal 
an  unsuspected  continuity  linking  the  Rosa  Mystica  of 
love  beheld  of  Catullus  with  the  least  last  versifier, 
who  is  yet  of  the  singing  ones  of  all  ages  —  to-day  as 
of  yesterday  and  so  on  forever.  I  confess  I  cared 
little  for  coins  until  I  saw  one  which  cancelled  in 
a  moment  the  eighteen  centuries  that  had  elapsed 
since  it  was  current.  It  was  by  no  means  an  uncom- 
mon coin  as  numismatists  reckon  it,  this  piece  of  metal 
bearing  the  features  of  the  wife  of  Antoninus  Pius, 
the  daughter  of  Annius  Verus,  the  mother  of  Faustina 
the  Younger,  who  in  turn  was  the  wife  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  and  mother  of  Commodus.  Pater  in  a  mem- 
orable chapter  of  Marius  the  Epicurean,  brings  the 
court  life  of  the  great  Stoic  emperor  before  us.  Thus, 
the  coin  glanced  at  casually,  mere  lump  of  bronze 
begrimed  and  battered  lying  in  a  dealer's  tray,  evoked 
Faustina  and  the  desire  for  her  image  and  super- 
scription. This,  then,  was  the  beauty  lurking  at  the 
heart  of  things  beheld  by  Swinburne  in  a  London 
street,  with  the  result  that  the  world  possesses  a 
poem  which  may  outlast  the  Roman  eagles. 

Once  again  :  in  that  vast  portrait  gallery  bequeathed 
by  the  Wizard  of  the  North  to  all  the  years  that  run, 
you  will  recall  the  figure  of  Old  Mortality  at  his  patient 
task  of  recutting  the  names  of  the  worthy  dead  who, 
lacking  his  pious  aid,  were  in  danger  of  being  forgot- 
ten by  the  living  world  about  them.  Well,  I  have 
sometimes  thought  that  in  a  manner  I  was  following 


98  AMPHORA 

those  Old  World  footsteps  of  the  stonecutter  when, 
for  example,  I  made  the  first  reprint  in  1891  of  George 
Meredith's  Modern  Lorue.  In  some  of  these  books 
"  are  the  broken  airs  you  once  loved  "  —  or  might 
come  to  love  if  from  now  on  you  knew  them.  In 
others  there  is  the  message  of  the  consecrated  ones 
—  the  Great  Companions  of  whom  we  know  as  they 
moved  and  spoke  among  men  only  by  the  record  that 
remains  —  their  book  —  their  Bible  ! 

But  it  would  sound  unduly  egoistic  if  I  took  up  the 
various  titles  and  themes,  which,  so  to  speak,  I  have 
"  resown  in  fields  their  authors  never  knew."  What 
I  have  wished  to  emphasize  is  the  finely  fortuitous 
manner  whereby  our  bookish  loves  come  to  exist  and 
"the  unconquerable  resurgence  of  beauty"  derived 
from  a  long  vanished  past.  It  is  admittedly  some- 
times difficult  to  decide  as  to  the  letter  or  the  spirit 
or  to  what  ultimate  purpose,  even,  these  men  have 
written.  For  it  must  be  conceded  that  "  we  know 
very  few  words  of  the  Divine  Language.  Most  of  its 
sounds  are  too  low  and  large  for  us  to  hear,  their 
vibrations  are  too  infrequent ;  we  are  only  aware  that 
a  word  has  been  spoken,  and  some  of  us  do  not  trouble 
about  it."  But  one  thing  we  shall  find ;  all  enduring 
literature  "  must  be  writtefi  in  faith"  and  this  appeal 
"  works  solely  upon  the  lonely  mind,  and  has  no  out- 
ward aid Those  who  work  for  the  moment 

have   their  reward.     In   every  generation  they  have 

audience    fit    though  many But  the  few  who 

have  ears  to  listen  to  the  voice  of  Life  itself,  7nust 
it>o)-k  by  faith.  They  speak  to  their  kindred  in  far-off 
places  and  far-off  times  assured  of  recognition,  for,  as 
the  poet  said,  the  gods  are  known  to  each  other." 

*  *  * 


AMPHORA  99 

AUCASSIN  AND  NICOLETTE 

WHAT  magic  halo  rings  thj>  head, 
Dream-maiden  of  a  mimtrel  dead  ? 
IVhat  charm  of  faerie  round  thee  hovers, 
That  all  who  listen  are  thj>  lovers  ? 

IVhat  power  yet  makes  our  pulses  thrill 
To  see  thee  at  thy  window-sill. 
And  by  that  dangerous  cord  down-sliding. 
And  through  the  moonlit  garden  gliding  ? 

True  maiden  art  thou  in  thy  dread ; 
True  maiden  in  thy  hardihead ; 
True  maiden  when,  thy  fears  half -over, 
Thou  lingerest  to  try  thy  lover. 

And  ah  !  what  heart  of  stone  or  steel 
But  doth  some  stir  unwonted  feel. 
When,  to  the  day  new  brightness  bringing. 
Thou  standest  at  the  stair-foot  singing  ! 

Thv  slender  limbs  in  boyish  dress. 
Thy  tones  half  glee,  half  tenderness, 
Thou  singest,  'neath  the  light  tale's  cover. 
Of  thy  true  love  to  thy  true  lover. 

O  happy  lover,  happy  maid, 
Together  in  sweet  story  laid ; 
Forgive  the  hand  that  here  is  baring 
Your  old  loves  for  new  lovers'  staring  ! 

Yet,  Nicolette,  why  fear' st  thou  fame  ? 
No  slander  now  can  touch  thy  name, 


100  AMPHORA 

Nor  Scandal's  self  a  fault  discovers, 
Though  each  newjyear  thou  hast  new  lovers. 

Nor,  Aucassin,  need'st  thou  to  fear 
These  lovers  of  too  late  a  year. 
Nor  dread  one  jealous  pang's  revival ; 
No  lover  now  can  be  thj>  rival. 

IVbat  flower  considers  if  its  blooms 
Light  haunts  of  men,  or  forest  glooms  ? 
IVhat  care  ye  though  the  world  discovers 
Your  flowers  of  love,  O  flower  of  lovers! 

F.    W.    BOURDILLON. 

AT  other  times  I  might  mention  luxuriating  in 
books,  with  a  peculiar  interest  in  this  way,  as  I 
remember  sitting  up  half  the  night  to  read  Paul  attci 
Virginia,  which  I  picked  up  at  an  inn  at  Bridgewater, 
after  being  drenched  in  the  rain  all  day ;  and  at  the 
same  place  I  got  through  two  volumes  of  Madame 
d'Arblay's  Cainilla.  It  was  on  the  loth  of  April,  1798, 
that  I  sat  down  to  a  volume  of  the  New  Eloise,  at  the 
inn  at  Llangollen,  over  a  bottle  of  sherry  and  a  cold 
chicken.  The  letter  I  chose  was  that  in  which  St. 
Preux  describes  his  feelings  as  he  first  caught  a 
glimpse  from  the  heights  of  the  Jura  of  the  Pays  de 
Vaud,  which  I  had  brought  with  me  as  a  boti  bouche  to 
crown  the  evening  with.  It  was  my  birthday,  and  I 
had  for  the  first  time  come  from  a  place  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood to  visit  this  delightful  spot.  The  road  to 
Llangollen  turns  off  between  Chirk  and  Wrexham  ; 
and  on  passing  a  certain  point  you  come  all  at  once 
upon  the  valley,  which  opens  like  an  amphitheatre, 
broad,  barren  hills  rising  in  majestic  state  on  either 


AMPHORA 


side,  with  "green  upland  swells  that  echo  to  the  bleat 
of  flocks  "  below,  and  the  river  Dee  babbling  over  its 
stony  bed  in  the  midst  of  them.  The  valley  at  this 
time  "  glittered  green  with  sunny  showers,"  and  a  bud- 
ding ash-tree  dipped  its  tender  branches  in  the  chiding 

stream But  besides  the  prospect  which 

opened  beneath  my  feet,  another  also  opened  to  my 
inward  sight,  a  heavenly  vision,  on  which  were  written, 
in  letters  large  as  Hope  could  make  them,  these  four 
words,  Liberty,  Genius,  Love,  Virtue;  which  have 
since  faded  into  the  light  of  common  day,  or  mock  my 
idle  gaze. 

The  beautiful  is  vanished,  and  returns  not. 

WILLIAM    HAZLITT. 

SPENT  LOVE 

WHEN  inj;our  distant  book-lined  room,  between 
Grey  busts  of  Clytie  and  of  Socrates, 
The  window  glimmers  where  the  ilex  trees 
Have  touched  the  sunset  with  their  fingers  green. 
And  twilight  blurs  the  page  upon  your  knees  ; 

You  stir  the  coal  to  make  a  little  flame  — 
/t  little  fame  to  idle  by  and  think 
Of  all  the  squandered  work  of  pen  and  ink 

Yoit  used  to  send  her  —  and  the  classic  name 

You  traced,  as  dawn  came  piercing  through  a  chink. 

IV bat  has  endured  ?     The  fever  in  the  brain  ? 
The  fret  of  meetings  where  the  sapphire  seas 
Gleamed  down  the  avenue  of  ilex  trees  — 

The  long,  long  talks  that  gave  some  peace  again, 
The  longer  silence  with  the  evening  breeze  ? 


AMPHORA 


tVbat  has  survived  of  love  made  manifest  ? 
The  bright  reflection  in  the  convex  glass 
Of  golden  combs  that  held  the  hair  like  brass  ? 

The  spell  of  shape  with  happy  colour  blest  ? 

Or  her  bleak  words,  that  all  these  things  should  pass  ? 

There  is  a  frie{e  where  a  Greek  girl  secures 
A  loosened  sandal.  Shej>et  lives  upon 
Some  stotie  that  tells  us  she  is  dead  and  gone  — 

So  round  the  dome  of  Time  a  word  endures, 

And  she,  who  uttered  it,  in  Thought,  lives  on, 

VIOLA   TAYLOR. 


SOME  thirty  years  ago,  Mr.  Lang,  in  a  fine  sonnet, 
drew  an  imaginative  analogy  between  Homer 
and  the  Nile.  It  is  one  full  of  suggestion.  Out  of 
trackless  and  apparently  endless  desert,  the  River  de- 
scends into  a  land  of  which  it  is  the  highway  and  the 
life,  which  it  fertilises  and  renders  habitable.  Its  own 
life  and  growth  are  remote  and  unknown.  Another 
modern  poet  has  extended  the  analogy  to  poetry 
itself :  — 

Or  I  am  like  a  stream  that  flows 
Full  of  the  cold  springs  that  arose 

In  morning  lands,  in  distant  hills  ; 
And  down  the  plain  my  channel  fills 
With  melting  of  forgotten  snows. 

Modem  exploration  has  tracked  the  Nile  to  its  source 
and  mapped  out  its  channel  and  its  tributaries.  The 
hidden  course  of  that  other  stream  we  cannot  retrace  ; 
it  still  issues  in  all  its  volume  and  splendour  out  of  a 
land  of  mystery:  nee  licuit popnlis parviim  te,Homere, 
videre. 

J.   W.    MACKAIL. 


AMPHORA  103 

PRIVATE  collections  of  books  always  existed,  and 
these  were  the  haunts  of  learning,  the  little  glim- 
mering hearths  over  which  knowledge  spread  her  cold 
fingers,  in  the  darkest  ages  of  the  world 

It  is  a  curious  reflection,  that  the  ordinary  private 
person  who  collects  objects  of  a  modest  luxury,  has 
nothing  about  him  so  old  as  his  books.  If  a  wave  of 
the  rod  made  everything  around  him  disappear  that 
did  not  exist  a  century  ago,  he  would  suddenly  find 
himself  with  one  or  two  sticks  of  furniture,  perhaps, 
but  otherwise  alone  with  his  books.  Let  the  work  of 
another  century  pass,  and  certainly  nothing  but  these 
little  brown  volumes  would  be  left,  so  many  caskets 
full  of  passion  and  tenderness,  disappointed  ambition, 
fruitless  hope,  self-torturing  envy,  conceit  aware,  in 
maddening  lucid  moments,   of  its  own  folly 

Perhaps  the  ideal  library,  after  all,  is  a  small  one, 
where  the  books  are  carefully  selected  and  thought- 
fully arranged  in  accordance  with  one  central  code  of 
taste,  and  intended  to  be  respectfully  consulted  at  any 
moment  by  the  master  of  their  destinies 

Voltaire  never  made  a  more  unfortunate  observation 
than  when  he  said  that  rare  books  were  worth  noth- 
ing, since,  if  they  were  worth  anything,  they  would 
not  be  rare.  We  know  better  nowadays ;  we  know 
how  much  there  is  in  them  which  may  appeal  to  only 
one  man  here  and  there,  and  yet  to  him  with  a  voice 
like  a  clarion.  There  are  books  that  have  lain  silent 
for  a  century,  and  then  have  spoken  with  the  trumpet 
of  a  prophecy.  We  shall  disdain  nothing ;  we  shall 
have  a  little  criticism,  a  little  anecdote,  a  little  bibliog- 
raphy ;  and  our  old  book  shall  go  back  to  the 
shelves  before  it  has  had  time  to  be  tedious  in  its 
babbling.  edmund  gosse. 


I04  AMPHORA 

ON  AN  OLD  SONG 

LITTLE  snatch  of  ancient  song, 
IVhat  has  made  thee  live  so  long  ? 
F/).'ing  on  thy  wings  of  rhyme 
Lightly  down  the  depths  of  time, 
Telling  nothing  strange  or  rare, 
Scarce  a  thought  or  image  there, 
Nothing  but  the  old,  old  tale 
Of  a  hapless  lover's  wail ; 
Offspring  of  an  idle  hour, 
Whence  has  come  thy  lasting  power  ? 
Bv  what  term  of  rhythm  or  phrase. 
By  what  subtle  careless  grace, 
Can  thy  music  charm  our  ears 
After  full  three  hundred  years  ? 


Landmarks  of  the  human  mind 
One  by  one  are  left  behind, 
And  a  subtle  change  is  wrought 
In  the  mould  and  cast  of  thought ; 
Modes  of  reasoning  pass  away. 
Types  of  beautv  lose  their  sway  ; 
Creeds  and  causes  that  have  made 
Many  noble  lives  must  fade, 
And  the  words  that  thrilled  of  old 
Now  seem  hueless,  dead,  and  cold; 
Fancy  s  rainbow  tints  are  flying. 
Thoughts,  like  men,  are  slowly  dying  ; 
All  things  perish,  and  the  strongest 
Often  do  not  last  the  longest ; 
The  stately  ship  is  seen  no  more, 
The  fragile  skiff  attains  the  shore; 


AMPHORA  los 

And  while  the  great  and  wise  decajy, 
And  all  their  trophies  pass  awaj>, 
Some  sudden  thought,  some  careless  rhyme, 
Still  floats  above  the  wrecks  of  Time- 

W.    E.    H.   LECKY. 


DOWN  to  the  year  1501  Aldus  used  the  type  known 
as  "  Roman,"  which  continues  in  common  use 
to  the  present  day.  During  that  year,  however,  he 
introduced  a  new  style  of  type,  copied,  it  is  said,  from 
the  handwriting  of  Petrarch,  and  cut  out  by  an  artist 
of  Bologna.  The  Virgi/  oi  1501  was  the  first  book  in 
which  it  was  employed,  and  from  that  time  onwards 
he  used  it  exclusively.  This  Prjidentiiis,  [referring  to 
the  edition  of  January,  1501],  the  first  of  two  volumes 
of  Christian  Poets  that  he  designed  to  publish,  is 
probably  the  last  work  issued  by  him  in  "  Roman  " 
type. 

The  sign  or  trade -mark  of  an  Anchor  entwined  by 
a  Dolphin  first  appears  in  the  second  volume,  issued 
in  the  course  of  the  year  1502,  and  was  continued  in 
all  the  publications  of  the  house  of  Aldus  until,  after 
a  century  of  work,  it  came  to  an  end  in  1597.  The 
Anchor  and  Dolphin  were  intended  to  symbolise  the 
two  qualities  that  Aldus  sought  to  combine  in  his 
undertakings  —  swiftness  of  execution  and  tenacity  of 
purpose,  or  speed  with  caution.  To  quote  his  own 
words,  "  I  can  surely  affirm  that  I  have  as  my  constant 
companions  the  dolphin  and  the  anchor.  I  have 
accomplished  much  by  holding  fast,  and  much  by 
pressing  on."     It  was  his  habit  to  "  make  haste  slowly." 

F.   W.    MACDONALD, 


io6  AMPHORA 

LIFE  is  a  wild  flame.  It  flickers,  the  wind  blows  it, 
the  tides  drown  it.  Perfect  life,  or  that  which 
we  on  earth  call  God,  is  no  thunderous  thing,  clothed 
in  the  lightning,  but  something  lovely  and  unshaken 
in  the  mind,  in  the  minds  about  us,  that  burns  like  a 
star  for  us  to  march  by,  through  all  the  night  of  the 
soul. 

JOHN    MASEFIELD. 


COMPENSATION 

THOUGH  we  grow  old  and  slow 
The  children  are  not  so. 
Their  world 's  a  rose  new-oped. 
Gold-hearted,  pearl^'  cupped. 
Golden  io-dav  :  to-morrow  ? 
IVho  talked  of  fear  and  sorrow  ? 
Their  world  spreads  endlesslv. 
Golden  from  sea  to  sea. 

Our  daj>s  turn  as  a  wheel 

Flying,  a  miracle  ; 

So  fast,  without  surcease. 

The  senses  ache  for  peace. 

So  short  our  days,  so  long 

Theirs,  between  song  and  song, 

So  much  to  see  and  do 

In  a  world  of  gold  and  blue. 

That  which  we  have  foregone 
Their  hands  take  hold  upon. 
Finish  what  we  let  fall ; 
Make  good,  atone  for  all. 


AMPHORA  107 

The  little  beads  inherit 
The  crown  we  missed,  and  wear  it ; 
The  darling  shoulders  bear 
Our  gold  and  miniver. 

Though  we  grow  old  and  pass, 
The  lad  we  made,  the  lass, 
Dance  in  the  wind  of  Spring, 
IVhen  flowers  break,  thrushes  sing. 
Gather  the  daffodil 
By  many  a  golden  bill. 
Yea,  though  our  suns  be  set 
Make  us  immortal  j>et. 

KATHARINE   TYNAN. 


TO  attempt  "  to  see  things  as  they  are  in  them- 
selves "  is  the  splendid  forlorn  hope  allotted  to 
Science :  it  is  no  work  for  Poetry.  The  business  of 
Poetry  is  to  see  spirits  as  they  are,  and  all  things  as  they 
are  in  the  life  of  the  spirit.  This  does  not  imply  any 
forsaking  of  the  ancient  way,  the  way  that  great  poetry 
has  gone  in  all  ages.  There  will  be  no  forgetting  the  old 
beauty,  the  visible  and  audible  beauty  of  the  never-too- 
much-loved  earth :  but  it  will  be  remembered  and 
loved  as  the  half-translucent  veil  of  that  other  beauty, 
the  beauty  that  is  true  with  the  only  truth  and  lasting 
with  the  only  immortality  that  are  given  to  us  to  know. 
And  it  may  be  that  that  is  not  all:  it  may  be  that 
there  is  in  poetry  the  power  to  reach  a  still  deeper 
truth,  a  still  profounder  being,  to  draw  at  times 
directly  from  that  unseen,  unsounded,  underlying 
Pool  of  Personality,  of  which  our  own  lives  are  but 
momentary  jets  flung  into  sunlight.     Some  among  our 


io8  AMPHORA 

poets  have  believed  this  and  transmitted  their  belief, 
none  in  more  beautiful  lines  than  these  of  Mr.  Binyon's  : 

"  There  is  no  longer  grief  nor  joy  for  me 

But  one  infinity  of  life  tliat  flows 

From  the  deep  ocean  heart  that  no  man  knows, 

Out  into  these  unnumbered  semblances 

Of  earth  and  air,  mountains  and  beasts  and  trees, 

One  timeless  flood  which  drives  the  circling  star 

In  furthest  heaven,  and  whose  weak  waves  we  are. 

Mortal  and  broken  oft  in  sobbing  foam, 

Yet  ever  children  of  that  central  home, 

Our  Peace,  that  even  as  we  flee,  we  find  ; 

The  Road  that  lies  before  us  and  behind, 

By  which  we  travel  from  ourselves,  in  sleep 

Or  waking,  towards  a  self  more  vast  and  deep." 

HENRY    NEWBOLT. 


THANATOs,  th)>  praise  I  sing, 
Thou  immortal, jyouthful  king! 
Glorious  offerings  I  will  bring  ; 
For  men  saj>  thou  hast  no  shrine, 
And  I  find  thou  art  divine 
As  no  other  god :  tly  rage 
Doth  preserve  the  Golden  Age, 
IVbat  zee  blame  is  tbjy  delay  ; 
Cut  the  flowers  ere  they  decay! 

Come,  we  would  not  derogate, 
Age  and  nipping  pains  we  hate. 
Take  us  at  our  best  estate : 
JVhile  the  head  burns  with  the  crown. 
In  the  battle  strike  us  down  ! 
At  the  bride-feast  do  not  think 
From  thj>  summons  we  should  shrink  ; 
IV e  would  give  our  latest  kiss 
To  a  life  still  warm  with  bliss. 


AMPHORA  109 


Come  and  take  us  to  thj>  train 
Of  dead  maidens  on  the  plain 
Where  white  lilies  have  no  slain ; 
Take  us  to  thejyouths,  that  thou 
Lov'st  to  choose,  of  fervid  brow, 
Unto  whom  tbj>  dreaded  name 
Hath  been  simply  known  as  Fame : 
IVith  these  unpolluted  things 
Be  our  endless  revellings. 

MICHAEL   FIELD. 


WE  read  the  Pagan  sacred  books  with  profit  and 
dehght.  With  myth  and  fable  we  are  ever 
charmed,  and  find  a  pleasure  in  the  endless  repetition 
of  the  beautiful,  poetic,  and  absurd.  We  find,  in  all 
these  records  of  the  past,  philosophies  and  dreams, 
and  efforts  stained  with  tears,  of  great  and  tender 
souls  who  tried  to  pierce  the  mystery  of  life  and 
death,  to  answer  the  eternal  questions  of  the  Whence 
and  Whither,  and  vainly  sought  to  make,  with  bits  of 
shattered  glass,  a  mirror  that  would,  in  very  truth, 
reflect  the  face  and  form  of  Nature's  perfect  self. 

These  myths  were  born  of  hopes,  and  fears,  and 
tears,  and  smiles,  and  they  were  touched  and  colored 
by  all  there  is  of  joy  and  grief  between  the  rosy  dawn 
of  birth,  and  death's  sad  night.  They  clothed  even 
the  stars  with  passion,  and  gave  to  gods  the  faults 
and  frailties  of  the  sons  of  men.  In  them,  the  winds 
and  waves  were  music,  and  all  the  lakes,  and  streams, 
and  springs,  —  the  mountains,  woods  and  perfumed 
dells  were  haunted  by  a  thousand  fairy  forms.  They 
thrilled  the  veins  of  Spring  with  tremulous  desire ; 
made  tawny  Summer's  billowed  breast  the  throne  and 


no  AMPHORA 

home  of  love;  filled  Autumn's  arms  with  sun -kissed 
grapes,  and  gathered  sheaves ;  and  pictured  Winter 
as  a  weak  old  king  who  felt,  like  Lear  upon  his 
withered  face,  Cordelia's  tears. 

ROBERT   G.    INGERSOLL. 
PAIN 

DISMAL  and  purposeless  and  grey 
The  world  and  all  its  woe,  we  say, 
Poor  slaves!  who  in  hot  hours  of  pain 
Yearn  for  the  night  to  come  again. 

Like  tortured  men  at  length  set  free, 
We  stagger  from  our  misery. 
And  -watch  zvith  foolish,  pain-dimmed  eyes 
yague  lands  and  tinrememhered  skies. 

IVhen  lo  !  what  sudden  splendour  spreads 
Its  heaven  of  rose  above  our  beads  ! 
What  soft  winds  visit  our  despair  ; 
What  lights,  what  voices  ever^nvhere  ! 

Ere  sorrow  taught  us,  knew  we  these 
Stupendous  bills,  amazing  seas  ? 
Shone  there  such  moonlight  on  the  lawn  ; 
So  deep  a  secret  in  the  dawn  ? 

What  wandering  hue  from  Paradise 
Has  found  a  home  in  children's  eyes  ? 
What  women  these,  whose  faces  bless 
Life  with  such  tranquil  tenderness  ? 

When  earth  and  sky  and  man  seem  fair, 
Be  this  my  watchword,  this  my  prayer  : 
Grant  me,  O  Gods,  to  prize  aright 
Sorrow,  since  sorrow  gives  me  sight. 

ST.   JOHN   LUCAS. 


AMPHORA  lit 


NOTES  AND  NAMES  IN  BOOKS 

WHAT  a  pity  it  is  that  all  owners  of  books  do  not 
put  their  signatures  on  a  fly-leaf!  —  it  is  more 
interesting  than  a  book-plate,  and  takes  up  less  room. 
It  is  interesting  to  learn  who  have  been  our  predeces- 
sors, and  to  trace  them,  perhaps  for  four  hundred 
years,  would  be  of  exceeding  interest.  They  might 
add  the  price  they  paid,  and  the  place  of  purchase,  as 
Sir  Mark  Sykes  has  done,  in  an  Aldine  Fustinus,  in 
red  morocco,  with  yellow  silk  lining,  penes  me.  But 
men  have  owned  that  book  for  nearly  four  centuries, 
and  there  is  nothing  to  tell  us  who  they  were.  Our 
predecessors  in  proprietorship  shared  our  tastes,  at  all 
events,  and  if  they  had  taken  the  trouble  to  write  their 
names,  they  might  receive  from  us,  and  we  from  them, 
a  slight  telepathic  impact  of  a  friendly  character. 

Our  old  books  are  haunted  things,  but  in  an  obscure 
way,  when  they  lack  signatures.  Even  marginal  notes 
I  own  to  liking. 


I  have  an  Angler's  Vade  Mecum,  of  1682,  with 
e.\cellent  contemporary  wrinkles  as  to  flies,  on  the 
margins.  But  who  was  the  angler  that  indited  them  > 
There  is  nothing  to  tell.  We  know  we  had  a  friend 
two  hundred  years  ago,  but  he  is  anonymous.  As  to 
sketching  on  margins,  do  not  our  old  school  and  col- 
lege books  preserve  the  profiles  of  her  who  then  was 
the  fairest  fair .-'  The  melancholy  years  must  have 
made  the  designs  unrecognizable  long  ago. 

While  thus  sympathetic  with  the  habit  of  impress- 
ing one's  personality  on  a  book,  let  me  add  that  it 
must  not  be  a  borrowed  book,  nor  an  old  book,  nor  a 


112  AMPHORA 

beautiful  book.  We  must  not  scribble  on  a  Shake- 
speare quarto  or  folio,  but  if  "the  old  corrector"  has 
really  done  so  in  his  day,  we  might  be  grateful  to  him 
now. 

ANDREW    LANG. 


QUOD  SEMPER 

Child 

WHAT  wind  is  this  across  the  roofs  so  softly  takes 
his  zvajf, 
That  hardly  makes  the  wires  to  sing,  or  soaring  smokes 
to  swap  ? 

Wind 

/  am  a  wearjy  southern  wind  that  blows  the  livelong  day 

Over  the  stones  of  Babylon,  Babylon,  Babylon, 
The  ruined  walls  of  Babylon,  all  fallen  in  decay. 

Oh,  I  have  blown  o'er  Babylon  when  royal  was  her  state, 
IVhen  fifty  men  in  gold  and  steel  kept  watch  at  every  gate, 
IVhen  merchant-men  and  boys  and  maids  thronged  early 
by  and  late 
Under  the  gates  of  Babylon,  Babylon,  Babylon, 
The  marble  gates  of  Babylon,  when  Babylon  was  great. 

Child 

Good  weary  wind,  a  little  while  pray  let  your  course  be 

stayed. 
And  tell  me  of  the  talk  they  held,  and  what  the  people  said, 
The  funny  folk  of  Babylon  before  that  they  were  dead, 
That  walked  abroad  in  Babylon,  Babylon,  Babylon, 
Before  the  towers  of  Babylon  along  the  ground  were  laid. 


AMPHORA  113 


Wind 
The  folk  that  walked  in  Babylon,  thejy  talked  of  wind 

and  rain, 
Of  ladies'  looks,  of  learned  books,  of  merchants'  loss  and 

gain, 
How  sitch-an-one  loved  such-a-maid  that  loved  him  not 
again 
{For  maids  were  fair  in  Babylon,  Babylon,  Babylon), 
Also  the  poor  in  Babylon  of  hunger  did  complain. 

Child 
But  this  is  what  the  people  say  as  on  their  way  they  go, 
Under  my  window  in  the  street,  I  hear  them  down  below. 

Wind 
IVhat  other  should  men  talk  about  five  thousandyears  ago  ? 

For  men  they  were  in  Babylon,  Babylon,  Babylon, 
That  now  are  dust  in  Babylon  I  scatter  to-andfro. 

LUCY   LYTTELTON. 

THE  glory  of  the  world  would  be  lost  in  oblivion  if 
God  had  not  provided  mortals  with  a  remedy  in 
Books.  .  .  .  Towers  are  razed  to  the  earth,  cities  are 
overthrown,  triumphal  arches  mouldered  to  dust ;  .  .  . 
as  long  as  the  Book  exists  the  author  cannot  perish. 

These  are  the  masters  who  instruct  us  without  rods 
and  ferrules,  without  hard  words  and  anger,  without 
clothes  or  money.  If  you  approach  them,  they  are  not 
asleep  ;  if  investigating  you  interrogate  them,  they  con- 
ceal nothing  ;  if  you  mistake  them,  they  never  grumble  ; 
if  you  are  ignorant,  they  never  laugh  at  you. 

In  Books  we  find  the  dead  as  it  were  living ;  in 
Books  we  foresee  things  to  come  ;  in  Books  warlike 
affairs  are  methodized ;  the  rights  of  peace  proceed 
from  Books.  richard  de  bury. 


114  AMPHORA 

DEy]D  POE-TS 

WHERE  be  they  that  once  would  sing, 
Poets  passed  from  wood  and  dale  ? 
Fainiljy,  now,  we  touch  the  string. 
Faithless,  now,  we  seek  the  Grail : 
Shakespeare,  Spenser,  nought  avail, 
Herrick,  England's  Oberon, 

Sidney,  smitten  through  his  mail. 
Souls  of  Poets  dead  and  gone  ! 

Ronsard's  Roses  blossoming 

Long  are  faded,  long  are  frail  ; 

Gathered  to  the  heart  of  Spring 
He  that  sung  the  breezy  flail.  ' 
Ah!  could  prayer  at  all  prevail. 

These  should  shine  where  once  they  shone. 
These  should  'scape  the  shadowy  pale  — 

Souls  of  Poets  dead  and  gone  ! 

IVhat  clear  air  knows  Dante's  wing  ? 

IVhat  new  seas  doth  Homer  sail  ? 
By  what  waters  wandering 

Tells  Theocritus  his  tale  ? 

Still,  when  cries  the  Nightingale, 
Singing,  sobbing,  on  and  on. 

Her  brown  feathers  seem  to  veil 
Souls  of  Poets  dead  and  gone. 

Charon,  when  my  ghost  doth  hail 

O'er  Cocytus'  waters  wan. 
Land  me  where  no  storms  assail 

Souls  of  Poets  dead  and  gone. 

ROSAMUND    MARRIOTT    WATSON. 
I  Joachim  du  Bellay. 


AMPHORA  115 


IN  THE  BRIGHT  LEXICON  OF  YOUTH" 


I  do  not  doubt  that  the  passionately-wept  deaths  of  young  men 
are  provided  for. 

WALT   WHITMAN. 


BECAUSE  many  of  the  dearest  associations  of  life  are 
centered  in  and  about  books,  —  the  tale  read  to 
a  child  by  some  loved  voice  forever  stilled,  —  the  poem 
recited  under  the  wide  and  starry  sky  in  hours  of  the 
soul  that  youth  alone  reveals  to  us,  —  I  want  to  speak 
of  my  own  experience  at  a  period  I  can  recall  with 
precision,  which  after  more  than  thirty  years  seems  as 
of  yesterday. 

If  I  could  have  my  wish  granted  I  would  re-live  a 
summer's  brief  vacation  in  Springfield,  Massachusetts, 
where,  in  1875,  I  found  my  friend  to  be,  Leo,  a  youth- 
ful High  School  graduate  of  that  city,  whose  bright 
day  came  to  an  unexpected  end  barely  four  years  later.' 
At  this  formative  epoch  of  our  lives  we  read  the  poets 
old  and  new.  Browning  among  moderns  being  our  lode- 
star : —  Paracelsus  z.n6.  The  Ring  and  the  Book  to-day 
still  weave  their  magic  spell  around  me.  Whitman 
was  not  absent  from  our  thought  though  it  must  be 
confessed  the  Leaves  did  not  pierce  home  to  my  heart 
and  brain  as  they  were  destined  to  do  a  few  years  later 
in  St.  Louis.  Extensive  if,  no  doubt,  superficial  read- 
ings in  Buckle,  Draper,  Lecky,  Spencer,  Darwin,  Hux- 
ley, Mill,  became  joint  enthusiasms  in  the  few  years 

I  His  full  name  was  Leopold  Lobsitz,  and  to  his  memory  I  have 
inscribed  Amphora.  He  was  born  in  New  York  City,  October  ist, 
1858,  and  came  with  his  family  to  Springfield  in  1864.  His  sudden 
death  took  place  in  Boston,  at  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital, 
February  17th,  1879.  Father  and  mother  have  since  followed  their 
son,  whose  untimely  end  wrought  such  shipwreck  of  their  hope. 


ii6  AMPHORA 

we  knew  each  other,  and,  as  I  find  by  reference  to  a 
little  packet  of  Leo's  letters,  our  discussions  took  on  at 
times  a  varied  and  even  recondite  air  of  investigation  ! 

Thus,  endowed  with  a  gleam  of  the  Vision  Splendid, 
and  like  an  earlier  Marius  and  Flavian,  (whose  career 
as  yet  "  upon  the  knees  of  the  Gods,"  we  knew  not 
of),  we  forsook  the  busy  streets  and  book  in  hand  lost 
ourselves  on  long  rambles  about  the  beautiful  country 
roads,  or,  again,  in  light-oared  skiff  adventured  the 
broad-bosomed  river  which  steals  past  Agawam  shore 
on  its  winding  and  willow-fringed  way  to  meet  and 
mingle  with  the  flashing  waters  of  the  distant  Sound. 

Is  it  not  well  to  speak  of  these  things  ?  This  boy 
with  his  love  of  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  the  Good, 
became  my  friend  when  conceivably  without  him  I  had 
suffered  irreparable  life-long  loss,  —  a  friendship  still 
having  its  beneficent  results  in  the  best  I  may  hope  to 
achieve. 

Now,  whenever  I  open  one  of  our  books  of  that  old 
time,  I  am  comforted  by  the  words  wherein  Caponsac- 
chi  takes  leave  of  Pompilia  : 

"All  this,  how  far  away  ! 
Mere  delectation,  meet  for  a  minute's  dream  !  — 
Just  as  a  drudging  student  trims  his  lamp, 
Opens  his  Plutarch,  puts  him  in  the  place 
Of  Roman,  Grecian  ;  draws  the  patched  gown  close, 
Dreams,  "  Thus  should  I  fight,  save  or  rule  the  world  !  "  — 
Then  smilingly,  contentedly,  awakes 
To  the  old  solitary  nothingness. 
So  I,  from  such  communion,  pass  content." 

Thus  it  is  I  have  come  to  see  that  the  thing  of  beauty 
in  art,  in  letters,  in  music,  —  in  a  word  the  beauty  of 
an  idea, — is  given  to  few  to  create,  while  to  enjoy 
should  be  the  inalienable  birthright  of  all.      Hence  I 


AMPHORA  117 

accept  Literature  for  what  it  seemed  in  those  golden 
hours  to  my  friend  and  myself,  a  guidewith  whom  we 
could  trust  ourselves  in  the  dark  as  with  a  lamp  that 
the  night  of  ages  has  never  extinguished.  What, 
think  you,  are  all  its  messages  and  ministries  if  not 
addressed  to  this  eternal  need  in  the  soul  of  man  ? 

They  cannot  fail  us  —  the  "prayers  of  Saints  that 
inly  burned,"  the  words  of  seekers  after  the  Perfect 
Way.  How  else  evolve  a  deeper  and  undying  music 
out  of  an  otherwise  dead  and  dumb  Past,  —  a  music 
born  of  love  and  longing  inseparable  from  "  that  little 
infinite  thing  the  human  heart  ? "  It  was  the  revela- 
tion of  just  this  truth,  which  over  thirty  years  ago 
came  to  me  and  my  friend,  that  I  wish  to  transmit  to 
others  who  pass  along  the  self-same  way. 

"  There  will  come  a  time,  when  it  shall  be  light ;  and 
when  man  shall  awaken  from  his  lofty  dreams,  and  Jind 
his  dreams  still  there,  and  that  nothing  has  gone  save 
his  sleep.^''  *  «  * 

I  TOOK  a  hansom  on  to-day 
For  a  round  I  used  to  know  — 
That  I  used  to  take  for  a  woman's  sake 
In  a  fever  of  to-and-fro. 

There  were  the  landmarks  one  and  all — 
iVhat  did  they  stand  to  show  ? 

Street  and  square  and  river  were  there  — 
Where  was  the  antient  woe  ? 

Never  a  hint  of  a  challenging  hope 
Nor  a  hope  laid  sick  and  low. 

But  a  longing  dead  as  its  kindred  sped 
A  thousand  years  ago  ! 

W.  E.  HENLEY. 


ii8  AMPHORA 


IF  we  grow  tired  of  an  antique  time,  and  desire  to 
to  realize  our  own  age  in  all  its  weariness  and  sin, 
are  there  not  books  that  can  make  us  live  more  in  one 
single  hour  than  life  can  make  us  live  in  a  score  of 
shameful  years  ?  Close  to  your  hand  lies  a  little  vol- 
ume, bound  in  some  Nile-green  skin  that  has  been 
powdered  with  gilded  nenuphars  and  smoothed  with 
hard  ivory.  It  is  the  book  that  Gautier  loved,  it  is 
Baudelaire's  masterpiece.  Open  it  at  that  sad  madri- 
gal that  begins 

"  Que  m'importe  que  tu  sols  sage.' 
Sois  belle  !  et  sois  triste  !  " 

and  you  will  find  yourself  worshipping  sorrow  as  you 

have  never  worshipped   joy Read  the  whole 

book,  suffer  it  to  tell  even  one  of  its  secrets  to  your 
soul,  and  your  soul  will  grow  eager  to  know  more,  and 
will  feed  upon  poisonous  honey,  and  seek  to  repent  of 
strange  crimes  of  which  it  is  guiltless,  and  to  make 
atonement  for  terrible  pleasures  that  it  has  never 
known.  And  then,  when  you  are  tired  of  these  flow- 
ers of  evil,  turn  to  the  flowers  that  grow  in  the  garden 
of  Perdita,  and  in  their  dew-drenched  chalices  cool 
your  fevered  brow,  and  let  their  loveliness  heal  and 
restore  your  soul ;  or  wake  from  his  forgotten  tomb 
the  sweet  Syrian,  Meleager,  and  bid  the  lover  of  Heli- 
odore  make  you  music,  for  he  too  has  flowers  in  his 
song,  red  pomegranate-blossoms,  and  irises  that  smell 
of  myrrh,  ringed  daffodils  and  dark-blue  hyacinths, 
and  marjoram  and  crinkled  ox-eyes.  Dear  to  him 
was  the  perfume  of  the  bean-field  at  evening,  and  dear 
to  him  the  odorous  eared-spikenard  that  grew  on  the 
Syrian  hills,  and  the  fresh  green  thyme,  the  wine-cup's 
charm. 

OSCAR   WILDE. 


AMPHORA  119 


SELF-QUESrrON 

Is  this  wide  world  not  large  enouffh  to  fill  thee, 
Nor  Nature,  nor  that  deep  man's  Nature,  Art  ? 
Are  they  too  thin,  too  weak  and  poor  to  still  thee, 
Thou  little  heart  ? 

Dust  art  thou,  and  to  dust  again  returnest, 

A  spark  of  fire  within  a  heating  clod. 
Should  that  be  infinite  for  which  thou  bnrnest  ? 
Must  it  be  God .? 

MARY    E.    COLERIDGE. 


MANY  a  time  I  have  stood  before  a  stall,  or  a  book- 
seller's window,  torn  by  conflict  of  intellectual 
desire  and  bodily  need.  At  the  very  hour  of  dinner, 
when  my  stomach  clamoured  for  food,  I  have  been 
stopped  by  sight  of  a  volume  so  long  coveted,  and 
marked  at  so  advantageous  a  price,  that  I  could  not 
let  it  go ;  yet  to  buy  it  meant  pangs  of  famine.  My 
Heyne's  Tihullus  was  grasped  at  such  a  moment.  It 
lay  on  the  stall  of  the  old  book-shop  in  Goodge  Street 
—  a  stall  where  now  and  then  one  found  an  excellent 
thing  among  quantities  of  rubbish.  Sixpence  was  the 
price  —  sixpence  !  At  that  time  I  used  to  eat  my  mid- 
day meal  (of  course  my  dinner)  at  a  coffee-shop  in 
Oxford  Street,  one  of  the  real  old  coffee-shops,  such 
as  now,  I  suppose,  can  hardly  be  found.  Sixpence 
was  all  I  had  —  yes,  all  I  had  in  the  world;  it  would 
purchase  a  plate  of  meat  and  vegetables.  But  I  did 
not  dare  to  hope  that  the  Tibullus  would  wait  until 
the  morrow,  when  a  certain  small  sum  fell  due  to  me. 
I  paced  the  pavement,  fingering  the  coppers  in  my 
pocket,   eyeing   the   stall,   two   appetites   at    combat 


120  AMPHORA 

within  me.  The  book  was  bought  and  I  went  Home 
with  it,  and  as  I  made  a  dinner  of  bread  and  butter  I 
gloated  over  the  pages. 

In  this  Tibullus  I  found  pencilled  on  the  last  page  : 
"  Perlegi,  Oct.  4,  1792."  Who  was  that  possessor  of 
the  book,  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago  ?  There  was  no 
other  inscription.  I  like  to  imagine  some  poor  scholar, 
poor  and  eager  as  I  myself,  who  bought  the  volume 
with  drops  of  his  blood,  and  enjoyed  the  reading  of 
it  even  as  I  did.  How  much  that  was  I  could  not 
easily  say.  Gentle-hearted  Tibullus  !  —  of  whom  there 
remains  to  us  a  poet's  portrait  more  delightful,  I  think, 
than  anything  of  the  kind  in  Roman  literature. 

An  taciturn  silvas  inter  reptare  salubres, 
Curantem  quidquid  dignum  sapiente  bonoque  est  ? 

GEORGE   GISSING, 
"EX  UBRIS" 

IN  an  old  book  at  even  as  I  read 
Fast  fading  words  adown  my  shadouy  P^S^^ 
I  crossed  a  tale  of  how,  in  other  age, 
At  Arqua,  with  his  hooks  around  him,  sped 
The  word  to  Petrarch  ;  and  with  noble  head 
Bowed  gently  0'' er  his  volume  that  sweet  sage 
To  Silence  paid  bis  willing  seigniorage. 
And  they  who  found  him  whispered,  "  He  is  dead!  " 

Thus  timely  from  old  comradeships  would  I 
To  Silence  also  rise.     Let  there  be  night, 
Stillness,  and  only  these  staid  watchers  by. 
And  no  light  shine  save  my  low  study  light  — 
Lest  of  his  kind  intent  some  human  cry 
Interpret  not  the  Messenger  aright, 

ARTHUR   UPSON. 


AMPHORA  121 

O  WORLD !  whose  days  like  sunlit  waters  glide, 
IVhose  music  links  the  midnight  with  the  morrow, 
JVbo  for  thine  own  hast  Beauly,  Power  and  Pride  — 
O  IVorld,  what  art  thou  .?    And  the  IVorld  replied  : 
"■^  A  bush  of  pleasure  round  a  heart  of  sorrow" 

O  Child  of  God !  thou  who  hast  sought  thy  way 
iVhere  all  this  music  sounds,  this  sunlight  gleams, 
'Mid  Pride,  and  Power,  and  Beauty  day  by  day  — 
And  what  art  thou  ?    I  heard  my  own  soul  say : 
"  A  wandering  sorrow  in  a  world  of  dreams.'" 

* 


IT  is  a  pleasant  theory  to  nourish,  that  every  deserv- 
ing book  sooner  or  later  finds  its  way  to  those 
that  can  love  it  best.  There  is  fate  in  these  matters  : 
a  destiny  that  leads  readers  —  by  devious  ways,  it  is 
true,  and  often  very  slowly,  but  surely  enough  —  to 
those  authors  in  whom  they  find  most  of  that  sympathy 
or  attraction  which  it  is  the  reader's  end  in  life  to 
discover.  Some  optimistic  fatalists  go  farther  and 
maintain  that  one  always  comes  to  a  book  at  the  right 
moment,  and  it  is  certainly  true  that  in  any  time  of 
stress  or  dubiety  one  never  fails  to  find  in  one's  read- 
ing some  striking  pertinence  or  even  parallel.  Destiny, 
we  may  at  least  affirm,  is  ever  watchful  to  effect 
wise  introductions.  Sometimes  her  instrument  is  the 
reviewer :  oftener  this  meeting  grows  out  of  conversa- 
tions—  a  new  friend  always  can  tell  us  of  a  new  book  : 
and  now  and  then  a  belated  appreciation  performs  the 
office.  It  pleases  me  to  think  at  this  moment  that 
Destiny  has  ordained  this  essay. 

E.   V.   LUCAS. 


122  AMPHORA 


THE  THREE  FAUSTS 


THE    MUSIC    OF    HELL 

I  HAD  a  dream  of  wizard  harps  of  hell 
Beating  through  starry  worlds  a  pulse  of  pain 
That  held  them  shuddering  in  a  fiery  spell. 
Yea,  spite  of  all  their  songs  —  a  fell  refrain 
IVhich,  leaping  from  some  red  orchestral  sun, 
Through  constellations  and  through  eyeless  space 
Sought  some  pure  core  of  bale,  and  finding  one 
(An  orb  whose  shadows  flickering  on  her  face 
Seemed  tragic  shadows  from  some  comic  mime, 
Incarnate  visions  mouthing  hopes  and  fears 
That  Fate  was  playing  to  the  Fiend  of  Time), 
Died  in  a  laugh  ^mid  oceanic  tears  : 
"  Berlio^,"  I  said,  "  thy  strong  hand  makes  me  weep, 
That  God  did  ever  wake  a  world  from  sleep.'^ 


THE    MUSIC    or    EARTH 

/  had  a  dream  of  golden  harps  of  earth  : 

And  when  they  shook  the  web  of  human  life. 

The  warp  of  sorrow  and  the  weft  of  mirth, 

Divinely  trembling  in  a  blissful  strife, 

Seemed  answering  in  a  dream  that  master-song 

IVhich  built  the  world  and  lit  the  holy  skies. 

Oh,  then  my  listening  soul  waxed  great  and  strong 

Till  my  flesh  trembled  at  her  high  replies  ! 

But  when  the  web  seemed  answering  lower  strings 

IVhich  hymn  the  temple  at  the  god's  expense, 


AMPHORA  123 

j4nd  bid  the  soul  flv  low  on  fleshly  zvmgs 

To  gather  dews  —  rich  honej>-dews  of  sense, 

"  Gounod,"  I  said,  "  /  love  that  siren-breath. 

Though  zvith  it  chimes  the  throbbing  heart  of  Death. ^'' 


THE   MUSIC   OF   HEAVEN 

/  had  a  dream  of  a^ure  harps  of  heaven 
Beating  through  starry  worlds  a  pulse  of  joy, 
Quickening  the  light  with  Lovers  electric  leaven, 
Quelling  Deaths  hand,  uplifted  to  destroy, 
Building  the  rainbow  there  with  tears  of  man 
High  over  hell,  bright  over  Night's  abysses. 
The  arc  of  sorrow  in  a  smiling  span 
Of  tears  of  many  a  lover's  dying  kisses, 
And  tears  of  many  a  Gretchen's  towering  sorrow, 
y4nd  many  a  soul  fainting  for  dearth  of  kin, 
And  many  a  soul  that  hath  but  night  for  morrow. 
And  many  a  soul  that  hath  no  day  but  sin  ; 
"  Schumann,"  I  said,  "  thine  is  a  wondrous  story 
Of  tears  so  bright  they  dim  the  seraphs'  glory." 

THEODORE   WATTS-DUNTON. 


CULTURE  is  the  feeling  of  the  induced  current  — 
the  thrill  of  the  lives  of  the  dead —  the  charg- 
ing the  nerves  of  the  body  and  powers  of  the  spirit 
with  the  genius  that  has  walked  the  earth  before  us. 
In  the  borrowed  glories  of  the  great  for  one  swift  and 
passing  page  we  walk  before  heaven  with  them,  breathe 
the  long  breath  of  the  centuries  with  them,  know  the 
joy  of  the  gods  and  live. 

GERALD   STANLEY   LEE. 


124  AMPHORA 

HOW  TO  OPEN  A  NEW  BOOK 

HOLD  the  book  with  its  back  on  a  smooth  or 
covered  table ;  let  the  front  board  down,  then 
the  other,  holding  the  leaves  in  one  hand  while  you 
open  a  few  leaves  at  the  back,  then  a  few  at  the  front, 
and  so  go  on,  alternately  opening  back  and  front, 
gently  pressing  open  the  sections  till  you  reach  the 
center  of  the  volume.  Do  this  two  or  three  times  and 
you  will  obtain  the  best  results.  Open  the  volume 
violently  or  carelessly  in  any  one  place  and  you  will 
likely  break  the  back  and  cause  a  start  in  the  leaves. 
Never  force  the  back  ;  if  it  does  not  yield  to  gentle 
opening,  rely  upon  it  the  back  is  too  tightly  or  strongly 
lined.  A  connoisseur  many  years  ago,  an  excellent 
customer  of  mine,  who  thought  he  knew  perfectly  how- 
to  handle  books,  came  into  my  office  when  I  had  an 
expensive  binding  just  brought  from  the  bindery  ready 
to  be  sent  home ;  he,  before  my  eyes,  took  hold  of  the 
volume,  and  tightly  holding  the  leaves  in  each  hand, 
instead  of  allowing  them  free  play,  violently  opened  it 
in  the  center  and  exclaimed,  "How  beautifully  your 
bindings  open  !  "  I  almost  fainted.  He  had  broken 
the  back  of  the  volume  and  it  had  to  be  rebound. 

WILLIAM    MATTHEWS. 

Man  walks  the  earth, 
The  quintessence  of  dust : 
Books,  from  the  ashes  of  his  mirth 

Madness  and  sorrow,  seem 
To  draw  the  elixir  of  some  rarer  gust ; 
Or,  like  the  Stone  of  Alchemy,  transmute 

Life's  cheating  dross  to  golden  truth  of  dream. 
JOHN  TODHUNTER. 


AMPHORA  12S 


DUST  O'  BOOKS 

SLANTWISE  one  loHg  starbeam  fiiids 
y4ccess  through  the  jealous  blinds, 
Lingertngljy,  lance  at  rest 
On  the  Poet  loved  the  best, 
Feeling  softly  down  the  shelves 
Habere  trry  books  reveal  themselves  ; 
And,  beneath  its  trembling  glow, 
Faint,  fine  blooms,  like  plum-mist  show- 
Dust  o'  Books,  I  love  you  so ! 

Wrecks  of  olden  minstrelsy 

IVben  the  lilting  tide  is  lee, 

Ride  at  flood  into  our  cove 

To  protest  unaltered  love  ; 

Or,  diffused  into  the  night. 

Some  sweet  Spirit  of  the  Past, 

Poising  in  an  airy  flight. 

Doth  behold  a  botne  at  last 

Here  with  hooks  he  fathered  when 

He  was  tangible  to  men 

—  Mew  his  soul  up  in  some  sphere 

iVhen  he  nnght  be  basking  here  !  — 

Now  the  Lady  Moon  looks  in. 

Searching  with  her  finger  thin 

To  detect  the  gentle  fluff 

From  some  rose  of  long  ago, 

IVhich,  once  found,  doth  seem  enough 

To  provoke  her  tender  est  glow  — 

Dust  o'  Books,  she  loves  you  so ! 

Dust  ?     Nay,  their  own  ashes  rest 
On  the  works  their  love  caressed : 


126  AMPHORA 

Out  of  linen  and  levant 
Thoughts  of  masters  emanant, 
From  the  outer  wash  of  air 
Their  sweet  ashes  settled  there  ! 
This  is  creed  to  all  of  us 
And  dust  of  earth,  unluminous, 
Hath  no  gold  like  this  we  know 
Of  an  otherworldly  glow  — 
Dust  o'  Books,  we  love  you  so  ! 

ARTHUR    UPSON. 


IT  is  a  joy  to  go  through  booksellers'  catalogues, 
ticking  here  and  there  a  possible  purchase.  For- 
merly, when  I  could  seldom  spare  money,  I  kept  cata- 
logues as  much  as  possible  out  of  sight ;  now  I  savour 
them  page  by  page,  and  make  a  pleasant  virtue  of  the 
discretion  I  must  needs  impose  upon  myself.  But 
greater  still  is  the  happiness  of  unpacking  volumes 
which  one  has  bought  without  seeing  them.  I  am  no 
hunter  of  rareties ;  I  care  nothing  for  first  editions 
and  for  tall  copies ;  what  I  buy  is  literature,  food  for 
the  soul  of  man.  The  first  glimpse  of  bindings  when 
the  inmost  protective  wrapper  has  been  folded  back  ! 
The  first  scent  of  books!  The  first  gleam  of  a  gilded 
title  !  Here  is  a  work  the  name  of  which  has  been 
known  to  me  for  half  a  lifetime,  but  which  I  never  yet 
saw ;  I  take  it  reverently  in  my  hand,  gently  I  open  it ; 
my  eyes  are  dim  with  excitement  as  I  glance  over 
chapter-headings,  and  anticipate  the  treat  which  awaits 
me.  Who,  more  than  I,  has  taken  to  heart  that  sen- 
tence of  the  Imitatio —  "In  omnibus  requiem  quaesivi, 
et  nusquam  inveni  nisi  in  angulo  cum  libro  "  ? 

GEORGE  GISSING. 


AMPHORA  127 

THE  Ideal  Book  or  Book  Beautiful  is  a  composite 
thing  made  up  o£  many  parts  and  may  be  made 
beautiful  by  the  beauty  of  each  of  its  parts  —  its  liter- 
ary content,  its  material  or  materials,  its  writing  or 
printing,  its  illumination  or  illustration,  its  binding  and 
decoration — of  each  of  its  parts  in  subordination  to 
the  whole  which  collectively  they  constitute  :  or  it  may 
be  made  beautiful  by  the  supreme  beauty  of  one  or 
more  of  its  parts,  all  the  other  parts  subordinating 
or  even  effacing  themselves  for  the  sake  of  this  one  or 
more,  and  each  in  turn  being  capable  of  playing  this 
supreme  part  and  each  in  its  own  peculiar  and  char- 
acteristic way.  On  the  other  hand  each  contributory 
craft  may  usurp  the  functions  of  the  rest  and  of  the 
whole  and  growing  beautiful  beyond  all  bounds  ruin 
for  its  own  the  common  cause. 

T.   J.   COBDEN-SANDERSON. 

7HE  KING 

THE  tit'oht  doth  cut  -with  shadowy  hiife 
In  half  the  kingdom  of  the  sun  ; 
The  red  dawn  meets  with  her  in  strife  ;  — 
Vassal  of  mine  I  hold  each  one. 
The  sailors  chant  beside  the  mast. 
The  tempests  lash  the  riven  foam, 
But  /,  the  King,  am  striding  fast 
Before  the  prow,  to  guide  it  home. 
I  am  the  lover  wed  to  tears, 
I  am  the  cynic  cold  and  sage, 
I  am  the  ghost  of  noble  years, 
I  am  the  prophet  lapped  in  rage. 
I  am  the  fane  no  longer  trod 
That  moulders  on  the  wild  hill-brow  ; 
/  am  the  fresh  and  radiant  god 


AMPHORA 


To  whom  thejyoung  religions  bow. 

Perfection  ■wod'd  in  many  a  guise 

Is  in  my  charge,  a  stabled  beast ; 

The  myriad  moons  look  from  my  eyes ; 

The  worlds  unnamed  sit  at  my  feast. 

My  glance  is  in  the  splendid  noon, 

The  golden  orchid  blown  of  heat ; 

My  brow  is  as  the  South  lagoon, 

And  all  the  stars  are  at  my  feet. 

The  lost  waves  moan  :  I  made  their  song. 

The  lost  lands  dream  :  I  wove  their  trance. 

The  earth  is  old,  and  death  is  strong  ; 

Stronger  am  I,  the  true  Romance. 

R.    T.    CHANDLER. 

OUR  stately  Milton  said  in  a  passage  which  is  one 
of  the  watchwords  of  the  English  race,  "as 
good  almost  kill  a  man  as  kill  a  good  Book."  But  has 
he  not  also  said  that  he  would  "have  a  vigilant  eye 
how  Bookes  demeane  themselves,  as  well  as  men  ;  and 
do  sharpest  justice  on  them  as  malefactors"?  .  .  . 
Yes !  they  do  kill  the  good  book  who  deliver  up  their 
few  and  precious  hours  of  reading  to  the  trivial  book; 
they  make  it  dead  for  them  ;  they  do  what  Hes  in  them 
to  destroy  '•  the  precious  life-blood  of  a  master-spirit, 
imbalm'd  and  treasured  up  on  purpose  to  a  life  beyond 
life ;  "  they  "  spill  that  season'd  life  of  man  preserv'd  and 
stor'd  up  in  Bookes."  For  in  the  wilderness  of  books 
most  men,  certainly  all  busy  men,  musl  strictly  choose. 
If  they  saturate  their  minds  with  the  idler  books,  the 
"  good  book "  which  Milton  calls  "  an  immortality 
rather  than  a  life,"  is  dead  to  them  :  it  is  a  book  sealed 
up  and  buried. 

FREDERICK   HARRISON. 


AMPHORA  129 

THE  VOICE  OF  THE  LAWS 

THIS  from   that   soul  incorrupt,   whom   Athens   had 
doomed  to  the  death, 
IVhen  Crito  brought  promise  of  freedom  :   "  Vainly  thou 

spendest  thy  breath  ! 
Dost  remember  the  wild  coiybantes  ?  — feel  they  the  knife 

or  the  rod  ? 
Heed  they  the  fierce  summer  sun,  the  frost,  or  winterly 

flaws  ?  — 
If  any  entreat  them  they  answer, '  we  hear  but  the  flutes 

of  the  God  !  ' 

"  So  even  am  I,  O  my  Crito  !  thou  pleadest  a  losing  cause  ! 
Thy  words  are  but  sound  without  import  —  /  hear  but 

the  voice  of  the  laws  ; 
Aud,  know  thou  !  the  voice  of  the  laws  is  to  me  as  the 
flutes  of  the  God." 

Thus   spake   that   soul  incorrupt.     And  wherever,  since 

hemlock  was  quaffed, 
A  man  has  stood  forth  without  fear,  has  chosen  the  dark 

deep  draught, 
Has  taken  the  lone  one  way,  nor  the  path  of  dishonour  has 

trod — 
Behold !  he,  too,  hears  but  the  voice  of  the  laws,  —  the 

flutes  of  the  God  ! 

EDITH    M.   THOMAS. 

WELL,  I  really  hope  that  we  have  at  last  settled 
the  matter;  that  fine  literature  is  simply  the 
expression  of  the  eternal  things  that  are  in  man,  that 
it  is  beauty  clothed  in  words,  that  it  is  always  ecstasy, 
that  it  always  draws  itself  away,  and  goes  apart  into 
lonely  places,  far  from  the  common   course  of  life. 


I30  AMPHORA 

Realise  this,  and  you  will  never  be  misled  into  pro- 
nouncing mere  reading-matter,  however  interesting,  to 
be  fine  literature ;  and  now  that  we  clearly  understand 
the  difference  between  the  two,  I  propose  that  we 
drop  the  "  fine"  and  speak  simply  of  literature. 

But  I  assure  you  that,  even  after  having  established 
the  grand  distinction,  it  is  by  no  means  plain  sailing. 
Everything  terrestrial  is  so  composite  (except,  perhaps, 
pure  music)  that  one  is  confronted  by  an  almost  end- 
less task  of  distinguishing  matter  from  form,  and  body 
from  spirit.  Literature,  we  say,  is  ecstasy,  but  a  book 
must  be  written  about  something  and  about  some- 
body ;  it  must  be  expressed  in  words,  it  must  have 
arrangement  and  artifice,  it  must  have  accident  as  well 
as  essence.  Consider  "  Don  Quixote  "  as  an  example  ; 
it  is,  I  suppose,  the  finest  prose  romance  in  existence. 
Essentially,  it  expresses  the  eternal  quest  of  the 
unknown,  that  longing,  peculiar  to  man,  which  makes 
him  reach  out  towards  infinity;  and  he  lifts  up  his 
eyes,  and  he  strains  his  eyes,  looking  across  the  ocean, 
for  certain  fabled,  happy  islands,  for  Avalon  that  is 
beyond  the  setting  of  the  sun.  And  he  comes  into  life 
from  the  unknown  world,  from  glorious  places,  and  all 
his  days  he  journeys  through  the  world,  spying  about 
him,  going  on  and  ever  on,  expecting  beyond  every  hill 
to  find  the  holy  city,  seeing  signs,  and  omens,  and  tokens 
by  the  way,  reminded  every  hour  of  his  everlasting  cit- 
izenship. "  From  the  great  deep  to  the  great  deep  he 
goes":  it  is  true  of  King  Arthur  and  of  each  one  of 
us;  and  this,  I  take  it,  is  the  essence  of  "  Don  Quix- 
ote," and  of  all  his  forerunners  and  successors.  Then, 
in  the  second  place,  you  get  the  eternal  moral  of  the 
book,  and  you  will  understand  that  I  am  not  using 
"  moral  "  in  the  vulgar  sense.    The  eternal  moral,  then, 


AMPHORA  131 

of  "  Don  Quixote  "  is  the  strife  between  temporal  and 
eternal,  between  the  soul  and  the  body,  between  things 
spiritual  and  things  corporal,  between  ecstasy  and  the 
common  life.  You  read  the  book  and  you  see  that 
there  is  a  perpetual  jar,  you  are  continually  confronted 
by  the  great  antimony  of  life. 

ARTHUR    MACHEN. 


THE  SECRET  INN 
("  The  Kingdom  is  within  Yoti") 

ENOUGH  of  dreams!    No  longer  mock 
The  burdened  hearts  of  men  ! 
Not  on  the  cloud,  but  on  the  rock, 

Build  thou  th_y  faith  again  : 
O,  range  no  more  the  realms  of  air, 

Stoop  to  the  glen-bound  streams. 
Thy  hope  was  all  too  like  despair : 
Enough,  enough  of  dreams. 

Here,  on  this  earth,  the  lists  are  set : 

Here  must  thou  lose  or  find 
The  Word  that  when  thine  eyes  are  wet 

Shall  speak  to  thine  own  kind. 
O,  call  not  to  thj>  heights  a  love 

That  sees  its  end  so  near  I 
If  there  be  ways  beyond,  above 

Descend,  and  find  them,  here. 

Descend,  descend,  Urania,  speak 

To  men  in  their  own  tongue  ! 
Leave  not  the  breaking  heart  to  break 

Because  thine  own  is  strong. 


132  AMPHORA 

This  is  the  law,  tti  dream  and  deed, 

That  heaven  must  walk  on  earth  ! 
O,  shine  upon  the  humble  creed 

Thai  holds  the  heavenly  birth. 
i 

An  earth-born  creed  ?     IV e  may  not  praise 

The  Eternal's  lowly  house ; 
Yet,  thro'  the  rude  beams  may  we  ga^e 

And  the  interwoven  boughs. 
If  on  the  little  Child  thou  shine, 

IVhom,  though  we  dream  no  more, 
Here,  in  the  heart's  hushed  Palestine, 

The  magi  still  adore. 

A  lowly  creed,  a  wayside  inn 

For  wayfarers  !     O  come. 
Now  that  the  long  dark  hours  begin. 

Lead  thou  the  nations  home  ! 
Shine  on  the  little  roof,  fair  star. 

The  thatch  in  silver  steep. 
That  kings  may  come  to  it  from  afar, 

And  the  shepherds  from  their  sheep. 

ALFRED    NOYES. 


THOSE  who  read  and  enjoy  the  same  books  are  of 
kindred  minds,  and  indeed  books  are  a  bond 
of  communion.  This  is  one  of  the  consolations  and 
comforts  of  Literature  that  it  brings  friends  to  us. 
Farther  than  this,  I  have  hosts  of  friends  in  this 
world  whom  I  shall  never  see  or  know ;  but  we  have 
in  common  a  love  for  the  same  books. 


AMPHORA  133 


GREAT  art  is  never  out  of  date,  nor  obsolete :  like 
the  moral  law  of  Sophocles,  "God  is  great  in  it, 
and  grows  not  old  " :  like  the  moral  law  of  Kant,  it  is 
of  equal  awe  and  splendour  with  the  stars.  A  line  of 
Virgil,  written  by  the  Bay  of  Naples,  in  some  m^st 
private  hour  of  meditation,  all  those  long  years  ago ! 
comes  home  to  us,  as  though  it  were  our  very  thought : 
upon  each  repetition,  experience  has  made  it  more 
true  and  touching.  Or  some  verse  of  Arnold,  written 
at  Oxford  or  in  London,  some  few  years  past :  it  comes 
home  to  us,  as  though  a  thousand  years  had  pondered 
it,  and  found  it  true.  In  beauty  and  in  strength,  in 
beauty  of  music  and  in  strength  of  thought,  the  great 
artists  are  all  contemporaries:  "Vandyke  is  of  the 
company,"  now  and  always :  an  eternal  beauty  and 
strength  are  upon  the  great  works  of  art,  as  though 
they  were  from  everlasting. 

LIONEL   JOHNSON. 


ROBERr  LOUIS  SrEVENSON 

IN  his  old  gusPy  garden  of  the  North, 
He  heard  lark-time  the  uplifting  Voices  call , 
Smitten  through  with  Voices  was  the  evenfall  — 
/4t  last  they  drove  him  forth. 

Now  there  were  two  rang  silver Iv  and  long ; 
And  of  Romance,  that  spirit  of  the  sun, 
And  of  Romance,  spirit  of  youth,  was  one  ; 
And  one  was  that  of  Song. 

Gold-belted  sailors,  bristling  buccaneers, 
The  flashing  soldier,  and  the  high,  slim  dame. 
These  were  the  Shapes  that  all  around  him  came,  - 
That  we  let  zo  with  tears. 


134  AMPHORA 

His  was  the  unstinted  English  of  the  Scot, 
Clear,  nimble,  with  the  scriptural  tang  of  Knox 
Thrust  through  it  like  the  far,  strict  scent  of  box, 
To  keep  it  iiiiforgot. 

No  frugal  Realist,  but  quick  to  laugh, 

To  see  appealing  things  in  all  he  knew. 

He  plucked  the  sun-sweet  corn  his  fathers  grew, 

A)id  would  have  naught  of  chaff. 

David  and  Keats,  and  all  good  singing  men, 
Take  to  your  hearts  this  Covenanter^ s  son. 
Gone  in  mid-j>ears,  leaving  our  years  undone. 
Where  you  do  sing  again  ! 

LIZETTE   WOODWORTH    REESE. 


THERE  is  a  curious  type  of  us  given  in  one  of  the 
lovely,  neglected  works  of  the  last  of  our  great 
painters.  It  is  a  drawing  of  Kirkby  Lonsdale  church- 
yard, and  of  its  brook,  and  valley,  and  hills,  and  folded 
morning  sky  beyond.  And  unmindful  alike  of  these, 
and  of  the  dead  who  have  left  these  for  other  valleys 
and  for  other  skies,  a  group  of  schoolboys  have  piled 
their  little  books  upon  a  grave,  to  strike  them  off  with 
stones.  So,  also,  we  play  with  the  words  of  the  dead 
that  would  teach  us,  and  strike  them  far  from  us  with 
our  bitter,  reckless  will ;  little  thinking  that  those  leaves 
which  the  wind  scatters  had  been  piled,  not  only  upon 
a  gravestone,  but  upon  the  seal  of  an  enchanted  vault 
—  nay,  the  gate  of  a  great  city  of  sleeping  kings,  who 
would  awake  for  us,  and  walk  with  us,  if  we  knew  but 
how  to  call  them  by  their  names. 

JOHN    RUSKIN. 


AMPHORA  13s 

"A    RETURN    THROUGH    THE    HEART    TO 
THE  LOST  GARDENS  OF  THE  HEART" 

Ecstacy  ;  the  infallible  instrument  by  which  fine  literature  may 
be  discerned  from  reading-matter. 

AKTHUK    MACHEN. 


BELIEVING  Literature  and  Ecstasy  convertible  terms, 
I  shall  give  a  passage  of  singular  beauty  from 
Hieroglyphics  by  Arthur  Machen,  (1902). 

.  .  .  "  But,  oh !  if  we,  being  wondrous,  journey 
through  a  wonderful  world,  if  all  our  joys  are  from 
above,  from  the  other  world  where  the  Shadowy  Com- 
panion walks,  then  no  mere  making  of  the  likeness  of 
the  external  shape  will  be  our  art,  no  veracious  docu- 
ment will  be  our  truth ;  but  to  us,  initiated,  the 
Symbol  will  be  offered,  and  we  shall  take  the  Sign  and 
adore,  beneath  the  outward  and  perhaps  unlovely 
accidents,  the  very  presence  and  eternal  indwelling 
of  God." 


"  Paint,  chisel,  then,  or  write"  —  the  law  of  survival 
decides  what  shall  last,  and  what  from  its  own  weak- 
ness will  be  forgotten.  Conceivably  it  is  easy  to  point 
out  defects ;  would  it  not  prove  wiser  to  accord  this 
arts  and  crafts  movement  its  just  due,  which  is  a  very 
decided  broadening  in  the  esthetic  lives  of  the  young 
men  and  women  of  to-day?  For,  viewed  in  any  fair- 
minded  way,  "  this  principle  of  joy  in  one's  labour,  of 
comradeship  in  one's  work,"  is  a  very  real  possession, 
as  old,  and  as  true,  and  as  everlasting  as  the  love  of 
Things  Beautiful  out  of  which  it  was  begotten. 


136  AMPHORA 

As  these  words  are  written  the  pageant  of  the 
punctual  year  unrolls  throughout  the  land,  —  Spring's 
flowing  tide  of  tender  green  and  tints  of  orchard  bloom, 
lost  in  a  larger  life,  have  ceased  on  sun -kissed  hill  and 
plain.  Slowly  the  high  midsummer  pomps  will  make 
way  for  Autumn's  garnered  sheaf,  the  dead  red  leaf 
and  trailing  vine.  Last  of  all,  deep  drifts  in  lonely 
country  roads,  the  solemn  snow-clad  forest  and  surf- 
tormented  wintry  shore.  And  through  all  this  the 
thought,  old  as  the  processional  of  the  year,  comes 
back  with  insistent  thrill :  even  as  these  —  signs  not  of 
extinction  but  of  beneficent  change  —  is  that  World 
of  Books  which  carries  across  the  centuries  the  buried 
Summers  of  Literature  and  the  souls  of  all  dead  sing- 
ers :  "  imbalm'd  and  treasur'd  up  on  purpose  to  a  Life 
beyond  Life,"  —  immortal  thoughts  "that  pierce  the 
night  like  stars." 

I  give  you  the  end  of  a  golden  string, 

Only  wind  it  into  a  bal), 
It  will  lead  you  in  at  Heaven's  gate 

Built  in  Jerusalem's  wall. 

WILLIAM    BLAKE. 


Ill 


Often  I  have  been  asked:  "Had  you  any  motive 
other  than  that  of  craftsmanship  in  your  shaping  of 
material .-' "  In  answer,  I  like  to  assert  my  belief  that 
my  choice  has  been,  and  is,  guided  by  a  unifying  prin- 
ciple which  is  responsible  for  whatever  I  may  select  or 
discard.  Confessedly,  my  work  has  opened  the  gates 
of  a  luminous  world  to  me.  And  for  this  very  reason 
I  would  transmit  what  light  I  may  to  others,  even  as 
in  races  of  old  relays  of  runners  passed  on  the  burning 
torch. 


AMPHORA  137 

I  am  convinced  that  in  literature  alone  is  to  be 
found  and  cherished  the  personal  might  which  brings 
together  vanished  past  and  living  present.  Hence, 
v^hat  I  have  learned  of  storm  and  sun,  may  I  not  in 
my  books  make  over  to  the  men  and  women  who 
reach  out  through  intellectual  sympathy  and  touch 
hands  with  me?  The  soul  of  literature  is  not  a  dead 
soul.  Its  poets  and  prophets  are  forever  vocable, 
creating  a  divine  unrest  which  must  unite  us  all  as 
Brethren  of  the  Book. 


This  then  is  my  conclusion  in  bookmaking  as  in  all 
other  arts :  whatsoever  we  would  accomplish  with  any 
measurable  degree  of  success  must  be  by  our  rnvn 
hearts  inspired.  By  our  own  hearts,  and  the  resultant 
knowledge  of  what  other  hearts  hold  precious,  —  "if 
aught  is  precious  in  the  life  of  man."  For  we  possess 
but  "  this  short  day  of  frost  and  sun,"  wherein  to  reach 
out  with  passionate  eagerness  toward  an  Ideal  it  may 
well  be  impossible  to  attain,  and  so  pass  on — if  not 
wholly  victors  yet  undefeated  and  unafraid. 

"  Fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 

Sleep  to  wake." 

*  *   * 

AH,  Sunflower,  weary  of  time, 
IVho  countest  the  steps  of  the  sun ; 
Seeking  after  that  sweet  golden  clime 
Where  the  traveller's  journey  is  done  ; 

IVhere  the  Youth  pined  away  with  desire, 
And  the  pale  virgin  shrouded  in  snow, 

Arise  from  their  graves,  and  aspire 
IVhere  niy  Sunflower  wishes  to  go  ! 

WILLIAM   BLAKE. 


138  AMPHORA 

ON  THE  OLD   ROAD 

ONCE  in  an  old  forgotten  day 
This  hy-track  was  a  trodden  waj', 
But  now,  so  few  the  steps  that  pass, 
The  ruts  are  carpeted  with  grass. 

The  careless  brambles  trail  across, 
The  gravel  has  its  garb  of  moss, 
And  oft  the  dawn  and  dusk  go  by 
Unnoted  of  a  human  eye. 

But  when  the  languid  day  is  past 
The  slumberous  road  awakes  at  last. 
And  many  feet  resume  their  way 
That  long  have  mouldered  into  clay. 

There  is  no  sound  of  stealthy  tread 
Along  this  pathway  of  the  dead — 
No  rustle  of  the  feet  that  pass 
Deadened  by  something  else  than  grass. 

Grey  men  who  toiled  and  wrought  of  yore, 
Lone  weary  women  burdened  sore, 
And  little  childreii  prattling  low  — 
/  catch  their  chatter  as  they  go ; 

And  here  the  lover  and  his  maid. 
Long  since  in  dismal  kirkyard  laid; 
And  mother  with  her  suckling  pressed 
Against  the  comfort  of  her  breast. 

They  all  had  passed,  their  traffic  done, 
Long  centuries  ere  I  saw  the  sun. 
I  stand  and  watch  them  wonderingly. 
Half  thinking  that  they  beckon  me. 


AMPHORA  139 


AT  last  Maggie's  eyes  glanced  down  on  the  books 
that  lay  on  the  window-shelf,  and  she  half  for- 
sook her  reverie  to  turn  over  listlessly  the  leaves  of 
the  "  Portrait  Gallery,"  but  she  soon  pushed  this  aside 
to  examine  the  little  row  of  books  tied  together  with 
string.  "  Beauties  of  the  Spectator,"  "  Rasselas," 
"Economy  of  Human  Lif  e,"  "  Gregory's  Letters"  — 
she  knew  the  sort  of  matter  that  was  inside  all  these: 
the  "Christian  Year" — that  seemed  to  be  a  hymn- 
book,  and  she  laid  it  down  again ;  but  Thomas  a 
Kempis? — the  name  had  come  across  her  in  her 
reading,  and  she  felt  the  satisfaction,  which  every  one 
knows,  of  getting  some  ideas  to  attach  to  a  name  that 
strays  solitary  in  the  memory.  She  took  up  the  little, 
old,  clumsy  book  with  some  curiosity :  it  had  the 
corners  turned  down  in  many  places,  and  some  hand, 
now  for  ever  quiet,  had  made  at  certain  passages 
strong  pen-and-ink  marks,  long  since  browned  by  time. 
Maggie  turned  from  leaf  to  leaf,  and  read  where  the 
quiet  hand  pointed.  .  .  "  Know  that  the  love  of  thy- 
self doth  hurt  thee  more  than  anything  in  the  world. 
...  If  thou  seekest  this  or  that,  and  wouldst  be  here 
or  there  to  enjoy  thy  own  will  and  pleasure,  thou  shalt 
never  be  quiet  nor  free  from  care :  for  in  everything 
somewhat  will  be  wanting,  and  in  every  place  there 
will  be  some  that  will  cross  thee.  .  .  .  Both  above  and 
below,  which  way  soever  thou  dost  turn  thee,  every- 
where thou  shalt  find  the  Cross:  and  everywhere  of 
necessity  thou  must  have  patience,  if  thou  wilt  have 
inward  peace,  and  enjoy  an  everlasting  crown.  ..." 
A  strange  thrill  of  awe  passed  through  Maggie  while 
she  read,  as  if  she  had  been  awakened  in  the  night  by 
a  strain  of  solemn  music,  telling  of  beings  whose  souls 
had  been  astir  while  hers  was  in  stupor.     She  went 


I40  AMPHORA 

on  from  one  brown  mark  to  another,  where  the  quiet 
hand  seem  to  point,  hardly  conscious  that  she  was 
reading  —  seeming  rather  to  listen  while  a  low  voice 
said —  ...  "I  have  often  said  unto  thee,  and  now 
again  I  say  the  same.  Forsake  thyself,  resign  thyself, 
and  thou  shalt  enjoy  much  inward  peace.  .  .  .  Then 
shall  all  vain  imaginations,  evil  perturbations,  and 
superfluous  cares  fly  away;  then  shall  immoderate 
fear  leave  thee,  and  inordinate  love  shall  die." 

.  .  .  She  read  on  and  on  in  the  old  book,  devouring 
eagerly  the  dialogues  with  the  invisible  Teacher,  the 
pattern  of  sorrow,  the  source  of  all  strength  ;  returning 
to  it  after  she  had  been  called  away,  and  reading  till 
the  sun  went  down  behind  the  willows.  .  .  .  She  knew 
nothing  of  doctrines  and  systems  —  of  mysticism  or 
quietism  ;  but  this  voice  out  of  the  far-off  middle  ages 
was  the  direct  communication  of  a  human  soul's  belief 
and  experience,  and  came  to  Maggie  as  an  unquestioned 
message. 

I  suppose  that  is  the  reason  why  the  small  old- 
fashioned  book,  for  which  you  need  only  pay  sixpence 
at  a  book -stall,  works  miracles  to  this  day,  turning 
bitter  waters  into  sweetness  :  while  expensive  sermons 
and  treatises,  newly  issued,  leave  all  things  as  they 
were  before.  It  was  written  down  by  a  hand  that 
waited  for  the  heart's  prompting ;  it  is  the  chronicle 
of  a  solitary,  hidden  anguish,  struggle,  trust  and 
triumph  —  not  written  on  velvet  cushions  to  teach 
endurance  to  those  who  are  treading  with  bleeding 
feet  on  the  stones.  And  so  it  remains  to  all  time  a 
lasting  record  of  human  needs  and  human  consola- 
tions :  the  voice  of  a  brother  who,  ages  ago,  felt  and 
suffered  and  renounced  —  in  the  cloister,  perhaps  with 
serge  gown  and  tonsured  head,  with  much  chanting 


AMPHORA  141 

and  long  fasts  and  with  a  fashion  of  speech  different 
from  ours  —  but  under  the  same  silent  far-off  heavens, 
and  with  the  same  passionate  desires,  the  same  striv- 
ings, the  same  failures,  the  same  weariness. 

GEORGE   ELIOT. 

UNRS  SUGGESTED   BY   ONE   OF    CHOPIN'S  NOCTURNES 

LOVE,  when  the  waning  atitiiniit  of  thp  life 
Shall  find  thee  old  and  withered  as  the  leaf, 
IVhen  chill  October  with  his  windy  knife 
Harvests  the  faded  splendour  of  the  trees, 
Think  that  thou  too  wast  lovely  once  as  these  ; 
Till  churlish  Time  came  creeping  like  a  thief 
And  stole  the  lustre  from  thy  raven  hair. 
And  brushed  the  roses  from  thy  rounded  cheek. 
Think  that  as  others  even  now  are  fair. 
Thou  too  wast  beautiful  and  well  beloved ; 
That  in  thy  veins  no  sluggish  current  moved 
Of  hardy  strength  and  goodly  maidenhood. 
Think  on  the  glory  of  thy  lifers  brave  morn, 
The  free  spent  days  of  passion  and  delight ; 
Hard  with  the  splendour  of  the  flaming  daivn, 
Sweet  with  the  starlit  gloom  of  restful  night. 
Think  thou  on  this,  and  age  shall  never  irk  ; 
But  even  as  one  that,  seeking  no  man's  praise, 
Sitting  alone,  reviews  his  handiwork  — 
Thou,  too,  shall  feel  the  glow  of  things  achieved, 
In  dreaming  on  the  well-remembered  days, 
Knowing  that  thou  of  nothing  art  bereaved 
By  speeding  time  and  untoward  decay. 
Think  upon  this,  and  all  thy  years  shall  seem 
A  crowning  glory,  and  decay  a  dream. 

*  * 


142  AMPHORA 

SHADOIVS 

WHEN  all  love's  words  of  passion,  spent  in  vain, 
Have  faltered  on  thjy  lips  bent  low  to  kiss, 
And  on  the  window  sobs  the  fitful  rain, 

IVhen  in  strange  shadows  of  the  last  abyss 
Desires  and  dreams  put  off  their  bravery 
And  other  worlds  are  dimmed  for  love  of  this, 

IVhen,  having  done  with  joy  and  hope  and  thee 
And  faces  bright  with  gentle  friendliness, 
I  venture  that  profound,  uncharted  sea 

IVhose  murmurs,  swelling  near  and  comfortless, 
Echo  and  drift  round  these  frail  summer  flowers, 
JVhose  ships  are  tossed  in  an  eternal  stress, 

What  will  avail  the  shining  hills  and  towers 
Of  some  vague  land  across  that  sullen  main 

If  through  the  splendour  of  its  loveless  hours 
I  long  for  earth's  dear  vanities  again  ? 


How  the  mood  for  a  book  sometimes  rushes  upon 
one,  either  one  knows  not  why,  or  in  conse- 
quence, perhaps,  of  some  most  trifling  suggestion. 
Yesterday  I  was  walking  at  dusk.  I  came  to  an  old 
farmhouse;  at  the  garden  gate  a  vehicle  stood  wait- 
ing, and  I  saw  it  was  our  doctor's  gig.  Having  passed, 
I  turned  to  look  back.  There  was  a  faint  afterglow  in 
the  sky  beyond  the  chimneys  ;  a  light  twinkled  at  one 
of  the  upper  windows.  I  said  to  myself,  Tristram 
Sliaiidy,  and  hurried  home  to  plunge  into  a  book  which 
I  have  not  opened  for  I  dare  say  twenty  years. 


AMPHORA  143 


Not  long  ago,  I  awoke  one  morning  and  suddenly 
thought  of  the  Correspondence  between  Goethe  and 
Schiller;  and  so  impatient  did  I  become  to  open  the 
book  that  I  got  up  an  hour  earlier  than  usual.  A  book 
worth  rising  for;  much  better  worth  than  old  Burton, 
who  pulled  Johnson  out  of  bed.  A  book  which  helps 
one  to  forget  the  idle  or  venomous  chatter  going  on 
everywhere  about  us,  and  bids  us  cherish  hope  for  a 
world  "  which  has  such  people  in  't." 

These  volumes  I  had  at  hand;  I  could  reach 
them  down  from  my  shelves  at  the  moment  when  I 
hungered  for  them.  But  it  often  happens  that  the 
book  which  comes  into  my  mind  could  only  be  pro- 
cured with  trouble  and  delay ;  I  breathe  regretfully 
and  put  aside  the  thought.  Ah  !  the  books  that  one 
will  never  read  again.  They  gave  delight,  perchance 
something  more  ;  they  left  a  perfume  in  the  memory  ; 
but  life  has  passed  them  by  for  ever.  I  have  but  to 
muse,  and  one  after  another  they  rise  before  me. 
Books  gentle  and  quieting;  books  noble  and  inspir- 
ing ;  books  that  well  merit  to  be  pored  over,  not  once 
but  many  a  time.  Yet  never  again  shall  I  hold  them 
in  my  hand ;  the  years  fly  too  quickly,  and  are  too  few. 
Perhaps  when  I  lie  waiting  for  the  end,  some  of  those 
lost  books  will  come  into  my  wandering  thoughts,  and 
I  shall  remember  them  as  friends  to  whom  I  owed  a 
kindness  —  friends  passed  upon  the  way.    What  regret 

in  that  last  farewell ! 

GEORGE   GISSING. 

ONLY  a  freakish  wisp  of  hair  ? — 
Nay,  but  its  wildest,  its  most  frolic  whorl 
Stands  for  a  slim,  enamoured,  sweet-Jleshed  girl! 


144  AMPHORA 

Poor  souls  —  they  have  but  time  and  place 

To  plaj>  their  transient  little  plav 

And  sing  their  singular  little  song, 

Ere  they  are  rushed  away 

Into  the  antient,  undisclosing  Night ; 

And  none  is  left  to  tell  of  the  clear  eyes 

That  filled  them  with  God's  grace, 

And  turned  the  iron  skies  to  skies  of  gold  ! 

None  ;  but  the  sweetest  She  herself  grows  old — 

Grows  old,  and  dies  ; 

And,  but  for  such  a  lovely  snatch  of  hair 

As  this,  none  —  none  could  guess,  or  know 

That  She  was  kind  and  fair, 

And  he  had  nights  and  days  beyond  compare  — 

Hozv  many  dusty  and  silent  years  ago  ! 

W.  E.  HENLEY. 

IT  is  through  Art,  and  through  Art  only,  that  we  can 
realize  our  perfection ;  through  Art,  and  through 
Art  only,  that  we  can  shield  ourselves  from  the  sordid 
perils  of  actual  existence.  This  results  not  merely 
from  the  fact  that  nothing  that  one  can  imagine  is 
worth  doing,  and  that  one  can  imagine  everything,  but 
from  the  subtle  law  that  emotional  forces,  like  the 
forces  of  the  physical  sphere,  are  limited  in  extent  and 
energy.  One  can  feel  so  much,  and  no  more.  And 
how  can  it  matter  with  what  pleasure  life  tries  to 
tempt  one,  or  with  what  pain  it  seeks  to  maim  and 
mar  one's  soul,  if  in  the  spectacle  of  the  lives  of  those 
who  have  never  existed  one  has  found  the  true  secret 
of  joy,  and  wept  away  one's  tears  over  their  deaths 
who,  like  Cordelia  and  the  daughter  of  Brabantio,  can 
never  die  ? 

OSCAR    WILDE. 


AMPHORA  145 

THERE  have  been  cases  of  people  who  were  artifi- 
cers, and  even  preachers,  at  heart,  who  were 
forced  to  succumb  to  the  concealed,  subconscious 
artist,  when  pen  touched  paper.  For  example  :  first 
logically  analyze  "  Lycidas " ;  you  will  be  disgusted 
just  as  Dr.  Johnson,  who  had  no  analysis  but  the 
logical,  was  disgusted.  Forget  your  logic,  your  com- 
mon-sense, and  read  it  again  as  poetry ;  you  will 
acknowledge  the  presence  of  an  amazing  masterpiece. 
An  unimportant  lament  over  an  unimportant  person- 
age, constructed  on  an  affected  pseudo-pastoral  plan, 
full  of  acrid.  Puritanical  declamation  and  abuse,  wan- 
tonly absurd  with  its  mixture  of  the  nymphs  and  St. 
Peter ;  it  is  not  only  wretched  in  plan  but  clumsy  in 
construction,  the  artifice  is  atrocious.  And  it  is  also 
perfect  beauty  I  It  is  the  very  soul  set  to  music;  its 
austere  and  exquisite  rapture  thrills  one  so  that  I 
could  almost  say :  he  who  understands  the  mystery 
and  the  beauty  of  "  Lycidas "  understands  also  the 
final  and  eternal  secret  of  art  and  life  and  man. 

ARTHUR    MACHEN. 

CANTICLES  IV.  8 

COME  with  me  from  Lebanon,  my  spouse,  with  me  from 
Lebanon, 
Down  with  me  from  Lebanon  to  sail  upon  the  sea. 
The  ship  is  wrought  of  ivorjy,  the  decks  of  gold,  and  there- 
upon 
Are  sailors  singing  bridal  songs  and  waiting  to  cast  free. 

Come  with  me  from  Lebanon,  my  spouse,  with  me  from 
Lebanon, 
The  rowers  there  are  ready  and  will  welcome  thee  with 
shouts. 


146  AMPHORA 

The  sails  are  silken  sails  and  scarlet,  cut  and  sewn  in 
Babylon, 
The  scarlet  of  the  painted  lips  of  women  thereabouts. 

And  there  for  thee  is  spikenard,  calamus  and  cinnamon. 
Pomegranates  and  frankincense  and  flagons  full  of 
wine. 
And  cabins  carved  in  cedar  wood  that  came  from  scented 
Lebanon, 
And  all  the  ship  and  singing  crew  and  rozvers  there  are 
thine. 

Come  with  me  from  Lebanon,  my  spouse,  with  me  from 
Lebanon, 
They  ^re  hauling  up  the  anchor  and  but  tarrying  there 
for  thee ; 
The  boatswain^  s  whistling  for  a  wind,  a  wind  to  blow  from 
Lebanon, 
A  wind  from  scented  Lebanon  to  blow  them  out  to  sea. 

I.  c. 

WITHOUT  doubt,  some  of  the  richest  and  most 
powerful  and  populous  communities  of  the 
antique  world,  and  some  of  the  grandest  personalities 
and  events,  have,  to  after  and  present  times,  left  them- 
selves entirely  unbequeathed.  Doubtless,  greater  than 
any  that  have  come  down  to  us,  were  among  those 
lands,  heroisms,  persons,  that  have  not  come  down  to 
us  at  all,  even  by  name,  date,  or  location.  Others  have 
arrived  safely,  as  from  voyages  over  wide,  centuries- 
stretching  seas.  The  little  ships,  the  miracles  that 
have  buoyed  them,  and  by  incredible  chances  safely 
conveyed  them,  (or  the  best  of  them,  their  meaning 
and  essence,)   over   long  wastes,   darkness,  lethargy. 


AMPHORA  147 


ignorance,  have  been  a  few  inscriptions  —  a  few 
immortal  compositions,  small  in  size,  yet  compassing 
what  measureless  values  of  reminiscence,  contempo- 
rary portraitures,  manners,  idioms  and  beliefs,  with 
deepest  inference,  hint  and  thought,  to  tie  and  touch 
forever  the  old,  new  body,  and  the  old,  new  soul. 
These !  and  still  these  !  bearing  the  freight  so  dear  — 
dearer  than  pride  —  dearer  than  love.  All  the  best 
experience  of  humanity,  folded,  saved,  freighted  to  us 
here.  Some  of  these  tiny  ships  we  call  Old  and 
New  Testament,  Homer,  yEschylus,  Plato,  Juvenal, 
Precious  minims !  I  think,  if  we  were  forced  to 
choose,  rather  than  have  you,  and  the  likes  of  you, 
and  what  belongs  to,  and  has  grown  of  you,  blotted 
out  and  gone,  we  could  better  afford,  appalling  as  that 
would  be,  to  lose  all  actual  ships,  this  day  fastened  by 
wharf,  or  floating  on  wave,  and  see  them,  with  all 
their  cargoes,  scuttled  and  sent  to  the  bottom. 

WALT   WHITMAN. 

ON  tVenlock  Edge  the  wood^s  in  trouble ; 
His  forest  fleece  the  IVrekin  heaves  ; 
The  gale,  it  plies  the  saplings  double. 
And  thick  on  Severn  snow  the  leaves. 

'  T  would  blow  like  this  through  holt  and  hanger 

IVhen  Uricon  the  city  stood : 
'  T  is  the  old  wind  in  the  old  anger, 

But  then  it  threshed  another  wood. 

Then,  't  was  before  my  time,  the  Roman 
/it  yonder  heaving  hill  would  stare : 

The  blood  that  warms  an  English  yeoman, 
The  thoughts  that  hurt  him,  they  were  there. 


148  AMPHORA 

There,  like  the  wind  through  woods  in  riot, 
Through  him  the  gale  of  life  blew  high  ; 

The  tree  of  man  was  never  quiet : 
Then  '/  was  the  Roman,  now  't  is  I. 

The  gale,  it  plies  the  saplings  double, 
It  blows  so  hard,  7  will  soon  be  gone : 

To-day  the  Roman  and  his  trouble 
Are  ashes  under  Uricon. 

A.    E.    HOUSMAN. 


THE  born  booklover,  I  had  almost  said  the  born 
lover  of  literature,  knows  the  fascination  of  a 
really  fine  edition ;  fine  in  its  outer  presentation,  as 
well  as  in  its  scholarship.  There  are  two  kinds  of 
books,  preeminently,  which  seem  to  have,  as  it  were, 
a  natural  claim  on  this  grace:  books  of  poetry,  and 
books  of  devotion.  The  Hesperides  of  Herrick,  the 
minor  poems  of  Milton,  the  Confessions  of  St.  Augus- 
tine, the  Imitatio,  the  Book  of  Psalms,  the  Book  of 
Job  :  these  are  some  specimens  of  literature,  which  the 
sense  of  propriety  in  us  longs  to  see  sent  forth  into 
the  world,  beautifully.  Do  not  tell  me,  that  the  form 
of  the  characters,  the  spacing  of  the  lines,  the  propor- 
tion of  the  margins,  the  surface  of  the  paper,  are  of  no 
concern,  if  I  am  once  intent  upon  the  thought  and 
spirit  of  the  things  said.  They  induce  in  me  a  better 
temper  for  appreciating  what  is  said  :  for  they  satisfy 
and  attune  more  senses  than  one  at  the  same  moment. 
I  confess,  and  have  no  desire  to  escape  from,  the  magic 
influence  of  choice  surroundings;  an  influence  so  deli- 
cate, subtile,  potent,  inexpressible,  defying  analysis. 

HERBERT   P.    HORNE. 


AMPHORA  149 

HOMER 

I  THINK  that  of  all  recent  books  the  two  that  have 
pleased  me  best  and  longest  are  those  delightful 
renderings  into  English  prose  of  the  Greek  of  Homer 
and  Theocritus,  which  we  owe,  the  one  to  Messrs. 
Henry  Butcher  and  Andrew  Lang  and  the  other  to 
Mr.  Lang's  unaided  genius.  To  read  this  Odyssey 
of  theirs  is  to  have  a  breath  of  the  clear,  serene  airs 
that  blew  through  the  antique  Hellas ;  to  catch  a 
gUmpse  of  the  large,  new  morning  light  that  bathes 
the  seas  and  highlands  of  the  young  heroic  world.  In 
a  space  of  shining  and  fragrant  clarity  you  have  a 
vision  of  marble  columns  and  stately  cities,  of  men 
august  in  single-heartedness  and  strength  and  women 
comely  and  simple  and  superb  as  goddesses;  and  with 
a  music  of  leaves  and  winds  and  waters,  of  plunging 
ships  and  clanging  armours,  of  girls  at  song  and  kindly 
gods  discoursing,  the  sunny-eyed  heroic  age  is  revealed 
in  all  its  nobleness,  in  all  its  majesty,  its  candour,  and 
its  charm.  The  air  is  yet  plangent  with  echoes  of  the 
leaguer  of  Troy,  and  Odysseus  the  ready -at-need  goes 
forth  upon  his  wanderings  :  into  the  cave  of  Poly- 
pheme,  into  the  land  of  giants,  into  the  very  regions  of 
the  dead  :  to  hear  among  the  olive  trees  the  voice  of 
Circe,  the  sweet  witch,  singing  her  magic  song  as  she 
fares  to  and  fro  before  her  golden  loom ;  to  rest  and 
pine  in  the  islet  of  Calypso,  the  kind  sea-goddess ;  to 
meet  with  Nausicaa,  loveliest  of  mortal  maids ;  to 
reach  his  Ithaca,  and  do  battle  with  the  Wooers,  and 
age  in  peace  and  honour  by  the  side  of  the  wise  Penel- 
ope. The  day  is  yet  afar  when,  as  he  sailed  out  to  the 
sunset  and  the  mysterious  west, 

Sol  con  un  legno,  e  con  quella  compagiia 
Picciola,  dalla  qual  non  fue  deserto, 


I50  AMPHORA 


the  great  wind  rushed  upon  him  from  the  new-discov- 
ered land,  and  so  ended  his  journeyings  forever;  and 
all  with  him  is  energy  and  tact  and  valour  and  re- 
source, as  becomes  the  captain  of  an  indomitable  human 
soul. 

W.  E.  HENLEY. 


rHE  OLD  LOVE 

THE  new  love  claims  my  thoughts  all  day, 
But  when  the  day  takes  flight, 
And  the  day's  cares  are  laid  away, 
My  dreams  are  yours  all  night. 

In  dreamsyou  are  not  dead  at  all. 

In  dreams  we  walk  again 
Under  the  shining  mountain  wall 

In  golden  sun  and  rain. 

In  dreams  the  old  days  come  once  more. 

And  not  these  sad  new  days 
IVhen  there  's  a  strange  foot  on  your  floor, 

A  stranger  in  your  ways. 

In  dreamsyou  are  not  old  and  sad. 

But  gay  and  in  your  prime, 
As  in  the  happy  days  we  had, 

In  the  old  loving-time. 

IVhen  sleep  at  last  has  closed  my  eyes  — 

How  the  old  love  endures  ! 
I  have  forgotten  the  new  ties. 

And  I  am  only  yours. 


AMPHORA  151 

FOR  US,  along  the  great  highways  of  time,  those 
monuments  stand  —  those  forms  of  majesty  and 
beauty.  For  us  those  beacons  burn  through  all  the 
nights.  Unknown  Egyptians,  graving  hieroglyphs; 
Hindus,  with  hymn  and  apothegm  and  endless  epic; 
Hebrew  prophet,  with  spirituality,  as  in  flashes  of 
lightning,  conscience,  like  red-hot  iron,  plaintive  songs 
and  screams  of  vengeance  for  tyrannies  and  enslave- 
ment ;  Christ,  with  bent  head,  brooding  love  and  peace, 
like  a  dove  ;  Greek,  creating  eternal  shapes  of  physi- 
cal and  esthetic  proportion  ;  Roman,  lord  of  satire,  the 
sword,  and  the  codex ;  —  of  the  figures,  some  far-off 
and  veiled,  others  nearer  and  visible  ;  Dante,  stalking 
with  lean  form,  nothing  but  fibre,  not  a  grain  of  super- 
fluous flesh  ;  Angelo,  and  the  great  painters,  archi- 
tects, musicians ;  rich  Shakespeare,  luxuriant  as  the 
sun,  artist  and  singer  of  Feudalism  in  its  sunset,  with 
all  the  gorgeous  colours,  owner  thereof,  and  using 
them  at  will;  —  and  so  to  such  as  German  Kant  and 
Hegel,  where  they,  though  near  us,  leaping  over  the 
ages,  sit  again,  impassive,  imperturbable,  like  the  Egyp- 
tian gods.  Of  these,  and  the  like  of  these,  is  it  too 
much,  indeed,  to  return  to  our  favourite  figure,  and 
view  them  as  orbs  and  systems  of  orbs,  moving  in  free 
paths  in  the  spaces  of  that  other  heaven,  the  kosmic 
intellect,  the  soul .'' 

WALT   WHITMAN. 

I  SHOULD  like  very  much  to  bespeak  the  interest  of 
you  all  in  the  great  permanent  things  in  English 
literature  of  the  present  time,  —  chief  of  those  poetry, 
then  essays,  little  fugitive  volumes,  apparently,  which 
have  in  them  the  germ  of  the  great  thing,  of  art,  of 
beauty,  and  of  high  purpose. 

WALLACE   RICE. 


152  AMPHORA 

PARADISI  GLORIA 

O  frate  tnio !  ciascuna  e  cittadina 
D'una  vera  citta —  .... 

DANTE. 

THERE  is  a  a'tj>,  builded  bj>  no  hand, 
And  unapproachable  by  sea  or  shore  ; 
And  unassailable  by  any  band 

Of  storming  soldiery  for  evermore. 

Nor  shall  we  longer  spend  our  gift  of  time 
In  time's  poor  pleasures, —  domg  petty  things 

Of  work  or  warfare,  merchandise  or  rhyme  ; 
But  we  shall  sit  beside  the  silver  springs 

That  flow  from  God's  own  footstool,  and  behold 
The  saints  and  martyrs,  and  those  blessed  few 

IVbo  loved  us  once  and  were  beloved  of  old 
To  dwell  with  them  and  walk  with  them  anew, 

In  alternations  of  sublime  repose, — 
Musical  motion, —  the  perpetual  play 

Of  every  faculty  that  Heaven  bestows 

Through  the  bright,  busy,  and  eternal  day. 

THOMAS    WILLIAM    PARSONS. 


LIFE  is  sweet,  brother.  Do  you  think  so  ?  There's 
night  and  day,  brother,  both  sweet  things. 
There 's  sun,  moon  and  stars,  brother,  all  sweet  things. 
There's  likewise  a  wind  on  the  heath.  Who  w"ould 
wish  to  die  ?  In  sickness,  Jasper  ?  There  's  the  sun 
and  the  stars,  brother.  And  in  blindness.''  There's 
the  wind  on  the  heath. 

GEORGE   BORROW, 


AMPHORA.  153 

ART,  music,  beautiful  nature,  poetry,  and  that  queer 
chaos  within  our  souls  of  fragmentary  and  min- 
gled impressions  whence  all  things  beautiful  arise,  into 
which  all  things  beautiful  resolve  —  all  this  has  in 
reality  but  one  fault :  that  it  is  unequally  distributed. 
The  pity  of  it  is  that  we,  a  small  class,  monopolize  all 
of  such  consoling  things,  we  who  need  the  least  con- 
soling in  life ;  that  we,  having  much  of  everything, 
should  have  the  whole  also  of  this.  The  cause  of 
dissatisfaction  in  many  minds,  and  of  a  degree  even  of 
hostility  towards  the  beautiful  uselessnesses  of  the 
world,  is  moreover  that  these  same  beautiful  useless- 
nesses which  ought  in  justice  to  be  possessed  by  all, 
so  often  serve  to  withdraw  the  attention  of  those 
who  do  possess  them  (and  possess  them,  as  I  said,  in 
virtual  monopoly),  from  the  necessities  of  the  very 
creatures  who  possess  in  this  world  nothing  save  the 
miserable  slightness  of  their  own  wants  and  who 
among  other  birthrights  of  mankind,  are  disinherited 

also  of  beauty 

Similarly  with  beautiful  things.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  we,  privileged  people,  are  given  too  much  of  them 
and  give  them  too  much  of  our  attention ;  but  that  is 
not  saying  that  in  the  world  at  large  there  is  too  much 
of  them  or  too  much  attention  given  thereunto.  It  is 
an  evil  of  distribution.  And  one  result,  let  us  hope, 
of  our  thinking  somewhat  of  matters  less  pleasant, 
may  be,  in  the  long  run,  in  the  long-expected  future, 
which  yet  sometimes  comes  with  a  rush,  that  the  less 
selfish  work  of  the  world  will  be  no  longer  the  mere 
removal  of  evil,  but  also  the  distribution  of  good ; 
and  among  various  sorts  of  good,  one  of  the  best  is 
beauty. 

VERNON    LEE. 


154  AMPHORA 

rsyiRS 

WHEN  /  consider  Life  and  it  s  few  years  — 
A  wisp  of  fog  betwixt  us  and  the  sun  ; 
A  call  to  battle,  and  the  battle  done 
Ere  the  last  echo  dies  within  our  ears  ; 
A  rose  choked  in  the  grass  ;  an  hour  of  fears ; 
The  gusts  that  past  a  darkening  shore  do  beat ; 
The  burst  of  music  down  an  unlistening  street — 
/  wonder  at  the  idleness  of  tears. 
Ye  old,  old  dead,  and  ye  of  yesternight. 
Chieftains,  and  bards,  aud  keepers  of  the  sheep, 
By  every  cup  of  sorrow  that  you  had. 
Loose  me  from  tears,  and  make  me  see  aright 
How  each  hath  back  what  once  he  stayed  to  weep  ; 
Homer  his  sight,  David  his  little  lad ! 

LIZETTE   WOODWORTH    REESE. 


THEOCRITUS 

WITH  certain  differences  it  is  the  same  with  our 
Theocritus.  From  him,  too,  the  mind  is  borne 
back  to  a  "  happier  age  of  gold,"  when  the  world  was 
younger  than  now,  and  men  were  not  so  weary  nor  so 
jaded  nor  so  highly  civilised  as  they  choose  to  think 
themselves.  Shepherds  still  piped,  and  maidens  still 
listened  to  their  piping.  The  old  gods  had  not  been 
discrowned  and  banished ;  and  to  fishers  drawing  their 
nets  the  coasts  yet  kept  a  something  of  the  trace  of 
amorous  Polypheme,  the  rocks  were  peopled  with 
memories  of  his  plaint  to  Galatea.  Inland,  among 
the  dim  and  thymy  woods,  bee-haunted  and  populous 


AMPHORA  155 

with  dreams  of  dryad  and  oread,  there  were  rumours 
of  Pan;  and  dwellers  under  thatch  —  the  goatherd 
mending  his  sandals,  the  hind  carving  his  new  staff, 
the  girls  who  busked  them  for  the  vintaging — were 
conscious,  as  the  wind  went  by  among  the  beeches  and 
the  pines,  and  brought  with  it  the  sounds  of  a  lonely 
and  mysterious  night,  that  hard  by  them  in  the  starry 
darkness  the  divine  Huntress  was  abroad,  and  about 
the  base  of  ^tna  she  and  her  forest  maids  drove  the 
chase  with  horn  and  hound.  In  the  cities  ladies  sang 
the  psalm  of  Adonis  brought  back  from  "  the  stream 
eternal  of  Acheron."  Under  the  mystic  moon  love- 
lorn damsels  did  their  magic  rites,  and  knit  up  spells 
of  power  to  bring  home  the  men  they  loved.  Among 
the  vines  and  under  the  grey  olives  songs  were  singing 
of  Daphnis  all  day  long.  There  were  junketings  and 
dancings  and  harvest -homes  for  ever  toward;  the 
youths  went  by  to  the  gymnasium,  and  the  girls  stood 
near  to  watch  them  as  they  went ;  the  cicalas  sang, 
the  air  was  fragrant  with  apples  and  musical  with  the 
sound  of  flutes  and  running  water;  while  the  blue 
Sicilian  sky  laughed  over  all,  and  the  soft  Sicilian  sea 
encircled  the  land  and  its  lovers  with  a  ring  of  sapphire 
and  silver.  To  translate  Theocritus,  wrote  Sainte- 
Beuve,  is  as  if  one  sought  to  carry  away  in  one's  hand 
a  patch  of  snow  that  has  lain  forgotten  through  the 
summer  in  a  cranny  of  the  rocks  of  .^tna:  —  "On  a 
fait  trois  pas  a  peine,  que  cette  neige  deja  est  fondue. 
On  est  heureux  s'il  en  reste  assez  du  moins  pour  donner 
le  vif  sentiment  de  la  fraicheur."  But  Mr.  Lang  has  so 
rendered  into  English  the  graces  of  the  loveliest  of 
Dorian  singers  that  he  has  earned  the  thanks  of  every 
lover  of  true  literature.  Every  one  should  read  his 
book,  for  it  will  bring  him  face  to  face  with  a  very 


156  AMPHORA 

prince  among  poets  and  with  a  very  summer  among 
centuries.  That  Theocritus  was  a  rare  and  beautiful 
master  there  is  even  in  this  English  transcript  an 
abundance  of  evidence.  Melancholy  apart,  he  was  the 
Watteau  of  the  old  Greek  world  —  an  exquisite  artist, 
a  rare  poet,  a  true  and  kindly  soul ;  and  it  is  very  good 
to  be  with  him.  We  have  changed  it  all  of  course, 
and  are  as  fortunate  as  we  can  expect.  But  it  is  good 
to  be  with  Theocritus,  for  he  lets  you  live  awhile  in 
the  happy  age  and  under  the  happy  heaven  that  were 
his.  He  gives  you  leave  and  opportunity  to  listen  to 
the  tuneful  strife  of  Lacon  and  Comatas ;  to  witness 
the  duel  in  song  between  Corydon  and  Battus ;  to  talk 
of  Galatea  pelting  with  apples  the  barking  dog  of  her 
love-lorn  Polypheme  ;  under  the  whispering  elms,  to 
lie  drinking  with  Eucritus  and  Lycidas  by  the  altar  of 
Demeter,  "  while  she  stands  smiling  by,  with  sheaves 
and  poppies  in  her  hand." 

It  is  relief  unspeakable  to  turn  from  the  dust  and 
din  and  chatter  of  modern  life,  with  its  growing  trade 
in  heroes  and  its  poverty  of  men,  its  innumerable 
regrets  and  ambitions  and  desires,  to  this  immense 
tranquillity,  this  candid  and  shining  calm. 

W.  E.  HENLEY. 


EPICEDWM 

LIKE  to  the  leaf  that  falls, 
Like  to  the  rose  that  fades, 
Thou  art  —  and  still  art  not  ! 
We  "whom  this  thought  enthralls. 
We  whom  this  mj'sterj^  shades, 
Are  bared  before  our  lot ! 


AMPHORA  157 

Like  to  the  light  gone  out. 
Like  to  the  sun  gone  down, 
Thou  art  —  andj/et  we /eel 
That  something  more  than  doubt, 
A)td  tnore  than  Nature^ s  frown, 
The  Great  Good  must  reveal. 

'  T  ts  not  with  thankless  heart, 
Norjfet  with  covert  hand, 

IVe  reach  from  deeps  to  thee  : 
IVe  take  our  grief  apart. 
And  with  it  bravely  stand 
Beside  the  voiceless  sea  ! 

O  gentle  memory  mine  — 
I  fill  the  world  with  thee. 
And  with  thy  blessing  sleep  ! 
But  for  thy  love  divine 
To  warm  the  day  for  me, 
IVhy  should  I  wake  or  weep  ? 

HORACE  TRAUBEL. 


MATTER  is  indeed  infinitely  and  incredibly  refined. 
To  any  one  who  has  ever  looked  on  the  face 
of  a  dead  child  or  parent  the  mere  fact  that  matter 
could  have  taken  for  a  time  that  precious  form,  ought 
to  make  matter  sacred  ever  after.  It  makes  no  differ- 
ence what  the  principle  of  life  may  be,  material  or 
immaterial,  matter  at  any  rate  cooperates,  lends  itself 
to  all  life's  purposes.  That  beloved  incarnation  was 
among  matter's  possibilities. 

WILLIAM    JAMES, 


15S  AMPHORA 

MY  dream  is  of  a  Library  in  a  Garden !  In  the 
very  centre  of  the  garden  away  from  house  or 
cottage,  but  united  to  it  by  a  pleached  alley  or  pergola 
of  vines  or  roses,  an  octagonal  book-tower  like  Mon- 
taigne's rises  upon  arches  forming  an  arbour  of  scented 
shade.  Between  the  book -shelves,  windows  at  every 
angle,  as  in  Pliny's  Villa  library,  opening  upon  a  broad 
gallery  supported  by  pillars  of  "faire  carpenter's  work," 
around  which  cluster  flowering  creepers,  follow  the 
course  of  the  sun  in  its  play  upon  the  landscape. 
"  Last  stage  of  all,"  a  glass  dome  gives  gaze  upon  the 
stars  by  night,  and  the  clouds  by  day:  "les  nuages 
.  .  .  les  nuages  qui  passent  ...  la  bas  ...  les  mer- 
veilleux  nuages!"  And  in  this  (Si^SXto/crjuocr  —  this 
Garden  of  Books  —  Siii  et  Afnicorum,'^^o\i\<i.  pass  the 
coloured  days  and  the  white  nights,  "not  in  quite 
blank  forgetfulness,  but  in  continuous  dreaming,  only 
half-veiled  by  sleep." 

A.    FORBES   SIEVEKING. 

ROMANCE 

AS  /  came  down  the  Highgate  Hill, 
The  Highgate  Hill,  the  Highgate  Hill, 
As  I  came  down  the  Highgate  Hill 

I  met  the  sun's  bravado, 
And  saw  below  me,  fold  on /old, 
Grejy  to  pearl,  and  pearl  to  gold, 
This  London  like  a  land  of  old. 
The  land  of  Eldorado. 

Oh  Drake  he  was  a  sailor  bold. 
And  Frobisher,  Sir  IValter,  too. 
But  ne'er  they  saia  so  rich  a  realm 
As  this  that  laj>  before  us. 


AMPHORA  159 


Methinks  they  strode  beside  me  still, 
Blood  of  mv  blood,  down  Highgate  Hill, 
Methinks  they  felt  the  self -same  thrill 
And  sang  the  self -same  chorus. 

And  Keats  he  joined  us  half -way  down 
Keats  the  chemist,  Keats  the  clerk, 
Oh  Keats  he  joined  us  half-way  down, 

And  laughed  our  lusty  laughter. 
And  hailed  with  us  the  far  lagoons. 
The  mystic  groves,  the  hid  doubloons. 
And  all  the  passionate,  splendid  noons. 

And  the  feasts  that  fall  thereafter. 

As  arm  in  arm  down  Highgate  Hill, 
Down  Highgate  Hill,  down  Highgate  Hill, 
As  arm  in  arm  down  Highgate  Hill, 

We  met  the  smCs  bravado. 
And  saw  below  us,  fold  on  fold. 
Grey  to  pearl,  and  pearl  to  gold. 
Our  London,  like  a  land  of  old. 

The  land  of  Eldorado. 

H.    H.    BASHFORD. 


FOR  we  writers  .  .  .  stand  at  a  significant  point  in 
time.  The  dawn  of  a  new  age  of  thought  is 
flushing  the  sky ;  the  old  order  fades ;  the  old  faith, 
creatress  of  much  glorious  work,  now  dies  the  natural 
death  of  all  faiths  that  have  strengthened  the  feet  and 
lifted  the  hearts  of  men  through  their  appointed  cen- 
turies. Reason  is  crowned,  and  the  trumpets  of  her 
ministers.  Science  and  Justice,  proclaim  her.  In  these 
high  moments  of  change,  let  the  lampbearers  cling  close 
to  their  sacred  torches  ;  cherish  the  flame  against  storm 


i6o  AMPHORA 

and  tempest,  and  keep  clear  their  ancient  altar-fires, 
even  tliough  they  cannot  keep  them  bright.  Then  the 
great  unborn  —  those  who  shall  follow  to  expand  their 
genius  in  conditions  of  culture,  tolerance,  and  knowl- 
edge we  know  not  —  may  say,  even  of  this,  our  time, 
that  despite  perishing  principals  and  decaying  conven- 
tions, despite  false  teaching,  false  triumphs  and  false 
taste,  there  were  yet  those  who  strove  for  the  imme- 
morial grandeur  of  their  calling  ;  who  pandered  to  no 
temptation  from  without  or  from  within  ;  who  followed 
none  of  the  great  world-voices,  were  dazzled  by  none 
of  the  great  world-lights,  used  their  gift  as  a  stepping- 
stone  to  no  meaner  life ;  but  clear-eyed  and  patient, 
neither  elated  nor  cast  down,  still  lifted  the  lamp  as 
high  as  their  powers  allowed,  still  pursued  art  singly 
for  her  own  immortal  sake. 

EDEN    PHILLPOTTS. 


IN  PASSING 

1    w AS  jy our  stepping-stone 
From  the  old  love  to  the  new  — 
/,  who  loved j/OH  atone  ; 
IVas  it  I  who  changed,  orjyou  ? 
Now  jyou  stand  on  land  with  jy our  own  true  lover. 
Poor  stone,  nty  heart,  let  floods  flow  over  ! 

I  was  a  desert  well ; 

Passing, jyou  slaked  four  thirst ; 

IVas  the  water  brackish,  tell  ? 

Yet  jyou  found  it  sweet  at  first : 

Nowfou  lave  and  bathe  in  the  bounteous  river, 

Maj/  sand-storms  choke  the  well  for  ever. 

GEORGINA    B.    PAGET. 


AMPHORA  i6i 

MAN'S  DAYS 

A  SUDDEN  ■wakin\  a  sudden  weepin' ; 
A  li'l  suckin\  a  li'l  sleepin'  ; 
A  cheer  s  full  joys  an"  a  cbeeVs  short  sorrows, 
WV  a  power  o'  failh  in  gert  to-morrows. 

Young  blood  red  hot  an'  the  love  of  a  maid; 

Wan  glorious  hour  as  'II  never  fade  ; 

Some  shadows,  some  sunshine,  some  triumphs,  some  tears  ; 

An'  a  gather  in'  weight  o'  the  flyin'  years. 

Then  auld  man's  talk  o'  the  days  behind  'e  ; 
Your  darter's  youngest  darter  to  mind  'e  ; 
A  li'l  dreamin',  a  li'l  dyin', 
A  li'l  lew  corner  o'  airth  to  lie  in. 

EDEN    PHILLPOTTS. 


SHOULD  books  as  they  come  from  the  press  have  a 
cloth  cover  or  a  paper  one  ?  This  is  a  question 
which,  if  fairly  asked,  would,  no  doubt,  result  in  an 
answer  favouring  a  change  from  the  prevalent  fashion 
of  binding  in  cloth,  covers  and  stiff  boards.  Looked 
at  from  an  artistic  point,  cloth  covers  are  unsatisfac- 
tory. Bookbinder's  cloth  seldom  has  any  of  that 
beauty  of  grain  or  texture  admired  so  much  in  leather, 
silk,  and  wool ;  and  when  attempts  are  made  to  rib  or 
grain  it  in  order  to  make  the  surfaces  catch  the  light 
and  let  the  shadows  fall,  the  result  is  a  mean  and  un- 
successful imitation.  Besides,  as  a  piece  of  decorative 
furniture,  a  cloth -bound  book  is  seldom  chosen  with 
success ;  often  too  strong  in  colour  for  anything  to 
come  near  it,  there  is  always  a  cold  shine  that  prevents 


i62  AMPHORA 

the  eye  from  resting  on  it  with  satisfaction.  It  is  diffi- 
cult, too,  to  understand  why  those  who  want  to  have 
their  best  books  bound  in  leather  of  their  own  liking 
have  to  pay  for  cloth  binding  which  has  to  be  destroyed. 
Surely  if  a  book  is  worth  keeping  it  ought  to  be  bound 
in  leather  ;  and  if  it  is  only  one  of  fashion's  fancy,  and 
passing  interest,  paper  covers  are  expensive  enough 
for  it.  And  what  designs  and  illustrations  could  be 
printed  on  these  paper  covers  !  Some  would,  of  course, 
be  as  impudently  advertising  as  an  importunate  poster, 
but  others,  and  most  of  them,  would  be  so  charmingly 
beautiful,  so  subtly  artistic  and  refined,  that  we  could 
afford  to  despise  the  existence  of  the  few  vulgar  prints. 
And  when  these  covers  became  dirty  and  torn  with 
successive  hand-graspings  of  the  interested  reader,  the 
book  loved  and  thought  w'orthy  to  be  treasured  would 
be  bound  in  leather  of  a  colour  and  grain  chosen  by 
the  owner,  and  if  possible  an  original  and  beautiful 
design  tooled  in  gold  upon  it.  Thus  would  the  almost 
forgotten  but  ever  beautiful  Art  of  Bookbinding  be 
encouraged. 

A  DREAM 

MY  dead  love  came  to  me,  and  said, 
"  God  gives  me  one  hour's  rest. 
To  spend  tnth  thee  on  earth  again  : 
How  shall  we  spend  it  best  ?  " 

"  IVhy,  as  of  old,"  I  said ;  and  so 

We  quarreir d,  as  of  old : 
But,  when  I  tiirn'd  to  make  mj>  peace, 

That  one  short  hour  was  told. 

STEPHEN    PHILLIPS. 


AMPHORA  163 

EPILOGUE 

O  LITTLE  waking  hour  of  life  out  of  sleep  ! 
IVhen  I  consider  the  many  million  jyears 
I  was  not  yet,  and  the  many  millionyears 
I  shall_not  be,  it  is  easy  to  think  of  the  sleep 
I  shall  sleep  for  the  second  time  without  hopes  or  fears. 
Surely  my  sleep  for  the  million  years  was  deep  ? 
I  remember  no  dreams  from  the  millionyears,and  it  seems 
I  may  sleep  for  as  many  million  years  without  dreams. 

ARTHUR   SYMONS. 

THERE  is  another  small  room  filled  with 
books  which  I  have  in  my  mind's  eye. 
It  is  the  room  in  which  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne 
thought  and  read  and  wrote  for  more  than  thirty 
years.  There  was  no  worship  of  numbers  in  that 
chamber.  There  was  worship  of  quality,  not  of  quan- 
tity. And  it  filled  one  with  a  deep  and  quiet  peace  to 
gaze  on  those  serene  shelves.  It  is  in  the  power  of 
every  booklover  to  dam  the  torrent  of  dead  books. 
It  is  surprising  how  few  books  are  alive  enough  to  be 
housemates.  The  true  test  for  the  booklover  is  love. 
If  you  do  not  love  a  book,  throw  it  away.  Never 
surrender  to  passions  or  prejudices  you  do  not  share. 
Never  yield  to  reputations.  Never  let  yourself  be 
bullied  by  authority. 

Let  us  begin,  then,  with  a  private  bonfire.  After 
we  have  flung  into  the  flames  all  the  dead  books  in 
our  flat  or  our  house,  a  great  wave  of  spiritual  quiet- 
ude will  pass  over  our  soul.  It  is  not  so  easy  to  or- 
ganize a  bonfire  of  books  in  public  libraries.  All  the 
bibliophiles  and  all  the  pedants  would  quarrel  over 
the  business.    All  the  bookworms  and  dilettanti  would 


i64  AMPHORA 

dispute  for  ever.  The  Peacockians,  for  instance,  would 
never  part  with  their  esoteric  pets.  The  Borrovians 
would  die  rather  than  see  "  L'avengro "  in  a  dust- 
destructor.  The  Literati  would  never  agree  about 
the  fuel  for  the  holocaust.  They  would  wrangle  for 
ever.  It  would  not  be  possible  to  settle  the  contro- 
versy by  means  of  a  Referendum,  for  the  people  would 
vote  for  nearly  all  the  worst  books. 

JAMES  DOUGLAS. 


FOR  fable  is  Love's  world,  bis  home,  his  hirtb-place : 
Delightedly  dwells  he  'mongfajys  and  talismans. 
And  spirits  ;  and  delight edljy  believes 
Divinities,  being  himself  divine. 
The  intelligible  forms  of  ancient  poets, 
The  fair  humanities  of  old  religion. 
The  power,  the  beauty,  and  the  majesty, 
That  had  their  haunts  in  dale,  or  piny  mountain, 
Or  forest  by  slow  stream,  or  pebbly  spring, 
Or  chasms  and  watery  depths  ;  all  these  have  vanished. 
They  live  no  longer  in  the  faith  of  reason ! 
But  still  the  heart  doth  need  a  language,  still 
Doth  the  old  instinct  bring  back  the  old  names. 
And  to  yon  starry  -world  they  now  are  gone, 
Spirits  or  gods,  that  used  to  share  this  earth 
IVtth  man  as  with  their  friend ;  and  to  the  lover 
Yonder  they  move,  from  yonder  visible  sky 
Shoot  influence  down  :  and  even  at  this  day 
'T  IS  Jupiter  who  brings  what  e'er  is  great. 
And  yenus  who  brings  every  thing  that 's  fair  ! 

SAMUEL    TAYLOR   COLERIDGE. 
(Schiller's  Piccolomini.) 


AMPHORA  165 

fN  THE  MILE  END  ROAD 

HOW  like  her !  But  '/ is  she  herself, 
Comes  up  the  crowded  street. 
How  little  did  I  think,  the  morn, 
Mjy  only  love  to  meet  ! 

IVbose  else  that  motion  and  that  mien  ? 

IVbose  else  that  airj>  tread  ? 
For  one  strange  moment  I  forgot 

Mj>  only  love  was  dead. 

AMY    LEVY. 

THE  COLLECTOR 

A  MAN  was  sitting  in  his  library  before  the  fire, 
looking  at  nothing.  He  was  a  rich  man,  and 
had  all  that  happy  people  are  supposed  by  the  less 
happy  to  want.  Above  all  he  had  perfect  taste.  His 
pictures  in  particular  were  wonderful :  he  never  made 
a  mistake. 

There  came  a  knock  at  the  door,  and  the  servant 
entered  to  say  that  a  small  packing-case  had  just  ar- 
rived, and  what  was  to  be  done  with  it.  "Bring  it 
here,"  said  his  master,  "  and  bring  a  hammer  and 
screw-driver." 

The  box  was  brought  in  and  opened :  it  contained  a 
picture  which  the  connoisseur  had  bought  the  day 
before  at  Christie's,  after  a  hard  struggle  and  at  an 
enormous  figure — a  small  woodland  scene  by  an  ex- 
quisite master,  so  tender  and  quiet  and  true  that  even 
unthinking  persons  who  saw  it  became  for  the  moment 
hushed  and  gentle,  and  sensitive  persons  almost  trem- 
bled, while  artists  waved  their  thumbs  at  it  with  mur- 
murs of  amazement  and  despair. 


i66  AMPHORA 

The  man  set  the  picture  on  a  chair  in  a  good  light 
and  studied  it  and  studied  it. 

After  a  few  minutes  he  rose  and  went  to  a  cabinet, 
from  a  drawer  of  which  he  took  a  large  flat  parcel. 
Returning  to  his  seat  before  the  fire,  he  drew-  from  the 
paper  an  oleograph,  representing  a  sunset,  framed 
atrociously  in  gilt  and  as  crude  and  garish  as  if  it  had 
been  coloured  with  orange-peel  and  sealing-wax.  It 
was  the  first  picture  he  had  ever  bought,  the  founda- 
tion-stone of  his  collection.  He  had  saved  up  for  it 
when  he  was  only  ten,  and  for  some  years  it  had  hung 
in  his  bedroom  and  rejoiced  him  night  and  morning. 

As  he  looked  at  it  now'  his  eyes  filled  with  tears. 

E.   V.    LUCAS. 

OVER  the  rim  of  the  Moor., 
And  under  the  starrj>  sky, 
Two  men  came  to  my  door 
And  rested  them  thereby. 

Beneath  the  hough  and  the  star. 
In  a  whispering  foreign  tongue, 

They  talked  of  a  land  afar 
And  the  merry  days  so  young! 

Beneath  the  dawn  and  the  bough 

I  heard  them  arise  and  go  : 
And  my  heart  it  is  aching  now 

For  the  more  it  will  never  know. 

Why  did  they  two  depart 

Before  I  could  understand  ? 
IVhere  lies  that  land,  O  my  heart  ? 

—  O  my  heart,  where  lies  that  land? 

"  Q." 


AMPHORA  167 

TO  C.  M.  P. 

OLOVE,  in  whose  hearl-nmrmured  name 
Is  charm  against  life's  endless  wrong, 
Since  all  the  untuned  world  became 
Inj/ou  a  song! 

I  bring  not  onl_y  all  I  wrought 
Into  the  faltering  words  of  speech, 
I  dedicate  the  song  I  sought 
Yet  could  not  reach, 

Nay,  all  that  passionately  fired 
My  heart  with  hope  for  ever  new 
Of  unattained,  but  deep-desired 
Beauty,  to  you. 

LAURENCE   BINYON. 


WE  cannot  afford  to  let  go  the  Shining  Ones  upon 
the  heights.  It  does  not  matter  that  the 
heights  are  so  high,  that  our  intelligences  climb  up  so 
poor  a  portion  of  the  way.  He  would  be  a  liar  full  of 
impudence  who  should  dare  to  say  that  he  felt  wholly^ 
at  ease  with  the  awful  Milton  or  Dante,  with  the  sol- 
emn meditations  of  Browne,  with  the  dread  death- 
march  over  death  of  dread  Lucretius.  There  are 
times  when  the  high  things  of  art  seem  almost  incred- 
ible ;  magnificent  delusions,  golden  dreams  :  their  cre- 
ators' pains  must  surely  have  been  too  vast  for  bear- 
ing. We,  with  our  little  lamps  of  intelligence  in  our 
hands,  go  tremblingly  through  the  sacred  dimness, 
hoping  to  comprehend  at  last  a  little  more.  Our  rev- 
erence is  a  religion  ;  genius,  like  love  and  beauty,  is  a 


i68  AMPHORA 

pledge  of  divinity  and  the  everlasting  ;  a  light  perfected 
lyric  lures  us  heavenward ;  and  from  of  old  come  the 
proudest  and  the  clearest  voices.  The  voices  of  the 
day  must  wait  for  their  consecrate  authority  and  con- 
firmed applause  till  Time,  the  just,  shall  please.  Take 
me  with  you  in  spirit,  Ancients  of  Art,  the  crowned, 
the  sceptred,  whose  voices  this  night  chaunt  2,  gloria  in 
excelsis,  flooding  the  soul  with  a  passion  of  joy  and 
awe. 

LIONEL  JOHNSON. 

THE  TORN  LETTER 

IroR'Ej'oiir  letter  into  strips 
No  bigger  than  the  tinv  feathers 
That  ducks  preen  out  in  changing  weathers 
Upon  the  shifting  ripple-tips. 

Thereafter  on  my  bed  alone 
I  seemed  to  see  you  in  a  vision, 
And  hear  j/ou  say :  "IVhy  this  derision 

Of  one  drawn  to  you,  though  unknown?" 

Yes,  eve's  quick  mood  had  run  its  course, 
The  night  had  cooled  my  hasty  madness  ; 
I  suffered  a  regretful  sadness 

IVhich  deepened  into  real  remorse. 

I  thought  what  pensive,  patient  days 
A  soul  must  know  of  grain  so  tender  ; 
How  much  of  good  must  grace  the  sender 

Of  such  sweet  words  in  such  bright  phrase. 

Uprising  then,  as  things  unpriced 
I  sought  each  fragment,  patched  and  mended; 


AMPHORA  169 

The  Diidiiigbt  faded  ere  I  had  ended 
And  gathered  words  I  had  sacrificed. 

But  some,  alas,  of  those  I  threw. 

Were  past  my  search,  destroyed  for  ever  : 
They  were  your  name  and  place  ;  and  never 

Did  I  regain  those  clues  to  yon. 

And  having  missed,  by  rash  unheed. 
My  first,  last,  only  means  to  know  you. 
It  dawned  on  me  I  must  for  go  you, 

And  at  the  sense  I  ached  indeed. 

That  ache  for  you,  got  long  ago. 
Comes  back  ;  I  never  could  outgrow  it. 
IVhat  a  revenge  did  you  but  know  it  ! 

But  that  you  will  not,  cannot  know. 

THOMAS    HARDY. 


IF  ecstasy  be  present,  then  I  say  there  is  fine  literature, 
if  it  be  absent,  then,  in  spite  of  all  the  cleverness, 
all  the  talents,  all  the  workmanship  and  observation 
and  dexterity  you  may  show  me,  then,  I  think,  we  have 
a  product  (possibly  a  very  interesting  one),  which  is 
not  fine  literature. 

Of  course  you  will  allow  me  to  contradict  myself, 
or  rather,  to  amplify  myself  before  we  begin  to  discuss 
the  matter  fully.  I  said  my  answer  was  the  word, 
ecstasy ;  I  still  say  so,  but  I  may  remark  that  I  have 
chosen  this  word  as  the  representative  of  many.  Sub- 
stitute, if  yo'u  like,  rapture,  beauty,  adoration,  wonder, 
awe,  mystery,  sense  of  the  unknown,  desire  for  the 
unknown.     All  and  each  will  convey  what  I  mean ; 


I70  AMPHORA 

for  some  particular  case  one  term  may  be  more  appro- 
priate than  another,  but  in  every  case  there  will  be 
that  withdrawal  from  the  common  life  and  the  com- 
mon consciousness  which  justifies  my  choice  of 
"  ecstasy "  as  the  best  symbol  of  my  meaning.  I 
claim,  then,  that  here  we  have  the  touchstone  which 
will  infallibly  separate  the  higher  from  the  lower  in  lit- 
erature, which  will  range  the  innumerable  multitude  of 
books  in  two  great  divisions,  which  can  be  applied 
with  equal  justice  to  a  Greek  drama,  an  eighteenth 
century  novelist,  and  a  modern  poet,  to  an  epic  in 
twelve  books,  and  to  a  lyric  in  twelve  lines. 

ARTHUR    MACHEN. 


Not  to-daj>, 
For  the  first  time,  thy  friend  zv  as  to  thee  dead: 
To  thee  he  died,  when  first  be  parted  from  thee. 

I  shall  grieve  dozen  this  blow,  of  that  I'm  conscious  : 

IVbat  does  not  man  grieve  down  ?    From  the  highest, 

As  from  the  vilest  thing  of  every  day 

He  learns  to  zvean  himself:  for  the  strong  hours 

Conquer  him.     Yet  I  feel  what  I  have  lost 

In  him.     The  bloom  is  vanished  from  my  life. 

For  O  !  he  stood  beside  me,  like  niy youth, 

Trans  form'  d  for  me  the  real  to  a  dream, 

Clothing  the  palpable  and  the  familiar 

IVith  golden  exhalations  of  the  dawn. 

Whatever  fortunes  wait  my  future  toils. 

The  beautiful  is  vanished — and  returns  not. 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR   COLERIDGE. 
(Schiller's  WallenUein.) 


AMPHORA  171 

I  LONGED  fo  bring  von  fJmvers  in  May-time, 
But  all  the  rose-buds  were  unblown; 
I  throbbed  to  see  you  through  the  day-time. 
But  not  till  night-fall  dared  I  near  you 
Lest  you  should  learn  that  one  could  fear  you, 
Gift  I  had  none  — 
For  you  a  rose,  a  rose  alone. 

But  June  has  wrought  its  old  fulfilling, 

Mv  heart  is  all  a  burning  rose  ; 

And  yet  the  night-fall  vague  and  stilling 

Brings  me  to  you  as  hushed  and  often 

My  wonder's  whirling  glow  to  soften. 

For  no  one  knows 

IVhat  hides  in  its  dim  blue  repose. 

GORDON    BOTTOMLEY. 


LITERATURE  has  commonly  been  called  humane,  by 
way  of  precept  and  of  praise  :  if  that  fact  be  well 
taken  to  heart,  it  rebukes  our  solitary  pride  in  our  own 
works,  and  it  calms  our  feverish  concern  for  our  own 
times  :  it  fills  the  mind  with  a  cheering  sense  of  secur- 
ity and  of  companionship.  In  the  humanities  of  lit- 
erature, its  various  occupation  with  the  whole  mind  of 
man,  consist  its  value  and  its  power :  and  the  famous 
phrase  in  Terence,  which  declares  the  natural  sympa- 
thy of  man  with  man,  serves  further  to  declare  the 
natural  sphere  of  men's  most  natural  art,  the  art  of 
letters.  The  most  enduring  things,  in  a  world  of 
growth  and  change,  are  the  human  passions  and  the 
human  sentiments :  it  is  the  office  of  good  literature, 
the  distinction  of  classical  literature,  to  give  form  in 


172  AMPHORA 

every  age  to  the  age's  human  mind.  Knowledge 
increases ;  the  history  of  one  age  is  the  intellectual 
inheritance  of  the  next. 

LIONEL   JOHNSON. 


O  EARTH,  my  mother  !  not  upon  thj>  breast 
IVould  I  my  heavy  head  in  death  recline, 
IVoiild  I  lay  down  these  weary  limbs  of  mine 
IVhen  the  great  Voice  shall  call  me  into  rest. 
Too  well  have  I  obeyed  thy  gay  behest, 
Too  eagerly  have  worshipped  at  thy  shrine ; 
The  better  part  of  all  my  life  was  thine, 
I  used  thee  as  a  lover  not  a  guest. 
I  would  not  make  with  thee  my  dying  bed, 
Low,  low  beneath  thy  lowest  let  me  be  ; 
Far  from  thy  living,  farther  from  thy  dead. 
From  every  fetter  of  remembrance  free. 
Deep  in  some  ocean  cave,  and  overhead 
The  ceaseless  sounding  of  thy  waves,  O  Sea  ! 

MARY   E.   COLERIDGE. 

1  COMPARE  the  life  of  the  intellectual  to  a  long  wedge 
of  gold  —  the  thin  end  of  it  begins  at  birth,  and 
the  depth  and  value  of  it  go  on  indefinitely  increasing 
till  at  last  comes  Death  (a  personage  for  whom 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne  had  a  peculiar  dislike,  for  his 
unmannerly  habit  of  interruption),  who  stops  the 
auriferous  processes.  Oh  the  mystery  of  the  name- 
less ones  who  have  died  when  the  wedge  was  thin  and 
looked  so  poor  and  light !  Oh  the  happiness  of  the 
fortunate  old  men  whose  thoughts  went  deeper  and 
deeper  like  a  wall  that  runs  out  into  the  sea  ! 

PHILIP   GILBERT   HAMERTON. 


AMPHORA        173 

THE  BOOKS  I  SHALL  NOT  READ  AGAIN 

There  is  no  booke  so  bad,  but  some  commodity  may  be  gotten 
by  it.  For  as  in  the  same  pasture,  the  Oxe  findeth  fodder,  the 
Hound  a  Hare  ;  the  Stork  a  Lizard,  the  faire  niaide  flowers;  so 
we  cannot,  except  wee  list  our  selves,  saith  Seneca,  but  depart  the 
better  from  any  booke  whatsoever. 

Pbacham's  CoinpUat  Gentleman,  1634. 

THERE  is  a  passage  in  The  Private  Papers  of 
Henry  Ryecroft,  (1903)  which  George  Gissing 
must  have  written  in  sad  sincerity  out  of  a  heart 
steeped  in  the  bitter  waters  of  experience.  As  I  read 
it,  my  own  youthful  days  and  nights  return  to  me  with 
fond  persistence  akin  to  a  tender  and  living  sorrow. 
"  Ah,"  he  cries  out,  "  the  books  that  one  will  never 
read  again  !  "  And  then  goes  on, "  I  have  but  to  muse 
and  one  after  another  they  arise  before  me." 

Yes,  they  do  indeed  arise  before  me  as  well!  Most 
poignantly  of  all  the  set  of  BeWs  British  Theatre'^ 
bought  by  an  indulgent  father  in  the  winter  of  1866-67 
when  I  crossed  the  Atlantic  to  meet  him  in  Hamburg, 
and  began  a  voyage  which  did  not  end  until  the  late 
summer  months  of  1870.  This  particular  collection 
bore  the  delicately  written  signature  of  an  unchronicled 
and  shadowy  Ja7ie  Sonntag  in  each  of  its  thirty-four 
volumes,  unearthed  in  an  old  bookshop  near  the  Elbe 
where,  on  a  top  shelf,  it  had  awaited  the  coming  of  the 
small  American.  The  set  comprised  one  hundred  and 
forty  distinct  compositions,  ranging  from  tragedy, 
comedy  and  opera,  to  mask,  (it  opens  with  Milton's 
Cofnus),  and  gave  what  must  have  been  at  the  time  — 

I  Bell's  British  Theatre.  A  coUecction  of  the  most  celebrated 
Comedies  and  Dramas,  with  about  120  fine  Portraits  of  Actors  in 
Character.  Complete  set,  34  vols.,  18  mo.  Calf.  London,  1792. — 
Bookseller's  Catalogue. 


174  AMPHORA 

the  dates  are  1 790  to  1 799,  —  a  popular  reprint  of  "  the 
most  esteemed  plays  "  ever  brought  together  to  delight 
the  heart  of  any  man  or  woman  who  loved  Old  Eng- 
lish Comedy  as  it  was  then  acted  upon  the  living  stage. 
There  was,  to  be  sure,  the  earlier  and  more  justly  fa- 
mous Dodsley  Collection  ;  but  I  was  not  aware  of  its 
existence.  Therefore,  it  is  to  John  Bell,  iHritiHli  li- 
brary. Strand,  that  I  trace  my  knowledge  of  Con- 
greve,  Cibber,  Farquhar,  Vanburgh,  and  even  Wycher- 
ley  !  I  wish  it  were  within  my  limits  or  power  to  go 
into  more  explicit  details  of  what  this  New  World, 
which  was  the  Old  World  of  the  Eighteenth  Century 
reborn  for  my  especial  delight,  has  ever  since  meant  to 
me.  Other  and  later,  perhaps  wiser  and  better,  book- 
loves  have  I  met  in  the  mid-forest  of  life,  but  it  is 
BelVs  British  Theatre  which  first  unlocked  to  me  the 
treasure-trove  of  English  literature.  No  one  told  me 
—  no  one  guided  me,  —  yet  I  heard  the  immortal  Lit- 
yerses-song  that  once,  and  once  only,  is  permitted  the 
listening  ear  of  Youth  when  Youth  broods  over  all. 

Now,  how  gladly  would  I  know  the  history  of  my 
set  of  Old  Plays.  Who  was  Jane  Sonntag,  its  original 
owner,  and  what  chain  of  fell  circumstance  sent  these 
volumes  to  the  second-hand  shop  at  Hamburg  ?  Pes. 
sibly  no  other  form  of  human  art  retains  that  first  fine 
careless  rapture  —  the  magic  of  a  forgotten  day  —  still 
alive  to  work  its  will  upon  me  as  do  these  dear,  dumpy 
eighteenmos.  My  regard  for  George  Farquhar  dates 
from  this  period;  The  Recruiting  Officer,  Sir  Harry 
Wildair,  The  Inconstant,  The  Beaux'  Strategem  —  a 
world  of  passionate  dust,  once  living,  but  now  gone  ! 
The  name  itself  —  Jane  Sonntag!  In  reading  the  tra- 
gedy of  Gustavus  Vasa  I  found  an  old-fashioned  pin, 
hand  wrought,  with  welded  head,  inserted  as  a  place- 


AMPHORA  175 

mark  when  the  volume  was  laid  aside  for  that  day's 
reading,  and  if  ever  resumed  this  little  relic  would  serve 
as  a  reminder.  Truly,  it  may  belong  to  the  period, 
"  when  these  old  plays  were  new." 

No  1  I  shall  never  again  read  books  as  I  once  read 
them  in  my  early  seafaring  when  all  the  world  was 
young,  when  the  days  were  of  tropic  splendour,  and 
the  long  evenings  were  passed  with  my  books  in  a 
lonely  cabin  dimly  lighted  by  a  primitive  oil -lamp, 
while  the  ship  was  ploughing  through  the  boundless 
ocean  on  its  weary  course  around  Cape  Horn.  These 
shadows  of  the  past  are  still  very  real  to  me.  But  fellow- 
travellers  over  the  same  road  may  be  reminded  by  my 
musings  of  familiar  stations  which  they  passed  likewise 
in  their  life's  journey. 

All  genuine  love  of  poetry,  as  it  now  appears  to  me, 
is  born  in  us, —  a  divine  birthright,  —  a  gift  not  to  be 
bought,  but,  given  the  happy  moment,  capable  of 
flaming  into  undying  life  of  the  deeper  soul.  What 
I  would  deprecate  is  the  sometime  lack  of  appreciation 
on  the  part  of  those  who  only  see  its  youthful  incerti- 
tude, its  childish  hesitations,  its  mere  bashfulness. 
For  the  love  of  Beauty  as  first  revealed  must  never  be 
set  down  to  sentimentalism — must  never  be  discred- 
ited or  made  ashamed.  It  is  the  one  thing  which  if 
lacking  nothing  else  can  take  its  place.  In  it  we  hear 
in  the  dewy  morn  of  Life,  amidst  the  old  garden  of 
Paradise,  what  we  know  instinctively  is  none  other 
than  the  voice  of  God  coming  from  "  where  the  great 
Voices  sound  and  Visions  dwell." 

' '  Is  it  a  dream  ? 

Nay  but  the  lack  of  it  the  dream, 

And  failing  it  life's  lore  and  wealth  a  dream. 

And  all  the  world  a  dream." 

*  *  * 


176  AMPHORA 


O 


H,  snows  so  pure  !  oh,  peaks  so  high  ! 
I  lift  to  you  a  hopeless  eye. 


I  see  your  icy  ramparts  drawn 
Between  the  sleepers  and  the  dawn. 

I  see  you,  when  the  sun  has  set, 
Flush  with  the  dying  daylight  yet. 

I  see  you,  passionless  and  pure, 
Above  the  lightnings  stand  secure  ; 

But  may  not  climb,  for  now  the  hours 
Are  spring's,  and  earth  a  ma^e  of  flowers. 

And  now,  mid  summer's  dust  and  heat, 
I  stay  my  steps  for  childish  feet. 

And  now,  when  autumn  glows,  I  fear 
To  lose  the  harvest  of  the  year. 

Now  winter  frowns,  and  life  runs  slow. 
Even  on  the  plains  I  tread  through  snow. 

IVhileyou  are  veiled,  or  dimly  seen. 
Only  reveal  what  might  have  been  ; 

And  where  high  hope  would  once  aspire 
Broods  a  vast  storm-cloud  dealing  fire. 

Oh,  snows  so  pure  !  oh,  peaks  so  high  ! 
I  shall  not  reach  you  till  I  die. 

LEWIS    MORRIS. 


INDEX    TO    AUTHORS 


IVhere  dates  of  birth  and  death  are  not  given  it  is 
assumed  that  the  zvriter  is  living.  Such  omissions  are 
from  inabilitj)  to  find  anjf  information  in  the  accredited 
reference  books. 

The  quotations  are  cited  either  by  the  first  line  if  a 
poem  or,  if  in  prose,  the  opening  words  of  the  selection. 


INDEX  TO  AUTHORS 


Alexander,  Russell 

St.  Martin's  bells  and  Bow  bells 

Anonymous  *  *  (living) 

The  sun  and  moon  and  stars  are  mine 

This  is  the  height  of  our  deserts 

Writ  on  a  ruined  palace  in  Kashmir 

For  our  part,  we  can  see  . 

Within  the  Book  I,  reading,  found   . 

I  raise  my  glass  Carthusian  brew 

Rock,  rock,  O  weary  world 

If  I,  not  ignorant  of  defeat  and  pain 

Was  it  some  sad-eyed  Florentine 

Once  in  an  old  forgotten  day    . 

Love,  when  the  waning  autumn 

When  all  love's  words  of  passion 

The  new  love  claims  my  thoughts  all  day 

Should  books  as  they  come 

Archer,  William  (1856-        ) 

What  is  a  miracle 


Arnold,  Matthew  (1822-15 
Even  if  good  literature 
The  great  men  of  culture 

Bashford,  Henry  Howarth  (1880- 
As  I  came  down  the  Highgate  Hill 

Benson,  E.  F.  (1867-        ) 

There  is  a  beautiful  old  story    . 


30 
31 
37 
39 
51 
70 
86 

138 
141 
142 

150 
161 


36 

56 

158 


i8o      INDEX    TO    AUTHORS 


BiNYON,  Laurence  (1869-        ) 

The  reading  of  a  great  poem     •         •         •  33 

0  Love,  in  whose  heart     .         .         .         .         167 

Blake,  William  (1757-1827) 

Ah,  Sunflower,  weary  of  time    .  .         137 

Bland,  Mrs.  Hubert  (Sei^  E.  Nesbit) 

Borrow,  George  (i  803-1 881) 

Life  is  sweet,  brother        .         .         .         .         152 

BOTTOMLEY,  GORDON 

1  longed  to  bring  you  flowers    .         .         .         171 

BouRDiLLON,  F.  W.  (1852-         ) 

What  magic  halo 99 

Brooke,  Rupert 

Here  in  the  dark,  O  heart  ...  26 

BucKE,  Richard  Maurice  (1837-1902) 

Dedication  of  Costiiic  Consciousness  .         .  38 

Burroughs,  John  (1837-        ) 

To  dig  into  the  roots         ....  6 

Butler,  Alfred  J.  (1850-        ) 

The  beauty  of  a  statue      ....  52 

For  in  the  end  scholarship        ...  56 

C ,  L 

Come  with  me  from  Lebanon   .         .         .         145 

C ,  L.  A. 


Take  it  up  and  drink  of  it  .         .         .  82 

Carlyle,  Thomas  (1 795-1881) 

If  a  book  come  from  the  heart  .         .  8 

Chandler,  R.  T. 

The  night  doth  cut  with  shadowy  knife  127 


INDEX    TO    AUTHORS      i8i 


Cobden-Sanderson,  T.  J. 

The  Book  Beautiful           ....  51 

The  Ideal  Book- 127 

Colborne-Veel,  Mary  (New  Zealand) 

Dear  books  !  and  each  the  living  soul       .  78 

Coleridge,  Mary  E.  (1861-1907) 

Pour  me  red  wine      .....  22 

Is  this  wide  world  not  large  enough          .  119 

0  Earth,  my  mother           .                  .         .  172 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor  (1772-1834) 

For  fable  is  Love's  world          .         .         .         164 
Not  to-day 170 

CoRNFORD,  Frances 

1  laid  me  down  upon  the  shore  .         .  67 

Courtney,  W.  L.  (1850-        ) 
The  Point  of  View : 

T.     Said  the  Star  to  the  Moth       .         .  17 

II.     Said  the  Moth  to  the  Star       .         .  18 

Davidson,  John  (1857-1909) 

There  is  a  dish  to  hold  the  sea          .         .  45 

I  felt  the  world  a-spinning  on  its  nave      .  57 

Whether  he  be  Homer      ....  69 

De  Bury,  Richard  (1281-1345) 

The  glory  of  the  world      .         .         .         .  113 

DoBSON,  Austin  (1S40-        ) 

When  finis  comes 69 

Yes;  when  the  ways  oppose  (T.  Gautier)  94 

Douglas,  James 

There  is  another  small  room     ,         .         .  163 

Du  Maurier,  George  (1834-1896) 

A  little  work,  a  little  play  .         .         .  46 


i82      INDEX    TO    AUTHORS 


Eliot,  George  (1819-1880) 

At  last  Maggie's  eyes 
Ellis,  Havelock  (1859-        ) 

The  present  is  in  every  age 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo  (1803-1882) 

We  are  as  much  informed 

Consider  what  you  have 
Falkner,  John  Meade 

What  matter  though  my  room  be  small 
Field,  Michael  (The  Misses  Bradley?) 

Thanatos,  thy  praise  I  sing 
Gautier,  Theophile  (1811-1872) 

Yes;  when  the  ways  oppose  (Dobson) 

Gibson,  Elizabeth 

The  Rose  of  Passion,  heavy  with  desire 

Nothing  is  ours  .... 

Gibson,  Wilfrid  Wilson 

Is  there  no  ending  of  song 
GissiNG,  George  (1857-1903) 

Many  a  time  I  have  stood  before  a  stall 

It  is  a  joy  to  go  through  . . .  catalogues 

How  the  mood  for  a  book 
GossE,  Edmund  (1840-        ) 

Artist  in  verse  ..... 

White  violet  garlands        .         .         . 

Private  collections  of  books 
Guild,  Reuben  A.  (1822-1899) 

But  is  there  to  be  no  End 
Hamerton,  Philip  Gilbert  (1834-1894) 

I  compare  the  life      .... 
Hardy,  Thomas  (1840-        ) 

I  tore  your  letter  into  strips 


INDEX    TO    AUTHORS      183 


Harrison,  Frederic  (1831-        ) 

Our  stately  Milton  said  in  a  passage 

Hazlitt,  William  (1778-1830) 

I  feel  as  I  read  that  if  the  stage 
At  other  times  I  might  mention 

Heath,  Ella 

I  am  the  reality  of  things  that  seem 

Henley,  William  Ernest  (1851-1903) 
Take,  dear,  my  little  sheaf  of  songs 
I  took  a  hansom  on  to-day 
Only  a  freakish  wisp  of  hair 
I  think  that  of  all  recent  books 
With  certain  differences    . 

Herrick,  Robert  (1868-        ) 

For  out  of  the  panorama  of  sense     . 

HiNKSON,  Katharine  Tynan  (1861-        ) 
Everything  has  an  ending 
Though  we  grow  old  and  slow 

Hole,  W.  G. 

Ten  thousand  years  ago    .         .         .         . 

Hood,  Thomas  (1779-1845) 

But  still  for  Summer  dost  thou  grieve 
Look  how  the  lark  soars  upward 

Hopkins,  Father  Gerard  (1844-1889) 

I  have  desired  to  go 
HoRNE,  Herbert  P. 

The  born  booklover,  I  had  almost  said 

HuusMAN,  A.  E.  (1859-         ) 

On  Wenlock  Edge  the  wood's  in  trouble 

Hunt,  Leigh  (i  784-1 859) 
The  shape  of  the  jar 


45 
100 

52 

61 
117 

143 
149 

154 

33 

85 
106 

90 

49 

75 

76 
148 
147 


i84      INDEX    TO    AUTHORS 


Ingersoll,  Robert  G.  (i  833-1 

In  that  vast  cemetery,  called  the  Past 

We  read  the  Pagan  sacred  books     . 
James,  William  (1842-1911) 

Matter  is  indeed  ....  refined 
Jammes,  Francis  {See  A.  Lenalie) 

Tell  me,  tell  me,  shall  I  ever     . 
Jefferies,  Richard  (1846-1S87) 

Is  there  anything  so  delicious  . 
Johnson,  Lionel  (i  867-1902) 

O  rare  divinity  of  Night    . 

News  !  Good  News!  at  the  old  year's  end 

Great  art  is  never  out  of  date   . 

We  cannot  afford  to  let  go 

Literature  has  commonly  been  called 
Lang,  Andrew  (1844-1912) 

Far  in  the  Past  I  peer,  and  see 

Suppose,  when  now  the  house  is  dumb 

Notes  and  Names  in  Books 
Lecky,  W.  E.  H.  (1838-1903) 

Little  snatch  of  ancient  song    . 
Lee,  Gerald  Stanley  (1861-        ) 

A  true  and  classic  book    . 

Culture  is  the  feeling 
Lee,  Vernon  (See  Violet  Paget  1856-        ) 

Art,  music,  beautiful  nature,  poetry  . 
Le  Gallienne,  Richard  (1866-        ) 

And  Books!  those  miraculous  memories 

When  do  I  love  you  most 
Lenalie,  A.  (translator.   See  Francis  Jammes) 
Levy,  Amy  (1861-1889) 

How  like  her!     But 't  is  she  herself 


87 
109 

157 


IS 

19 
64 

133 
167 
171 

42 

53 
III 

104 

SO 
123 

55 
55 


165 


INDEX    TO    AUTHORS      185 


Lewes,  George  Henry  (1817-1878) 

Quintus  Curtius  tells  us  that  ...  73 
Lowell,  James  Russell  (1819-1881) 

Poetry  has  a  key  which  unlocks  .  .  7 
Lucas,  E.  V. 

It  is  a  pleasant  theory  to  nourish      .         .  121 

A  man  was  sitting  in  his  library  .  .  165 
Lucas,  St.  John 

Dismal  and  purposeless  and  grey  .  .  no 
Lyttelton,  Lucy  (Lucy  Masterman) 

What  wind  is  this  across  the  roofs  .  .  112 
Macdonald,  F.  W.  (1842-        ) 

Few  of  man's  works  last  so  long       .         .  63 

Down  to  the  year  1501  Aldus  used  .         •  105 

Machen,  Arthur  (1863-        ) 

I  should  scarcely  be  justified    ...  ii 

Well,  I  really  hope  that  we  have  at  last    .  129 

There  have  been  cases  of  people       .         .  145 

If  ecstasy  be  present           ....  169 

Mackail,  J.  W.  (1859-         ) 

The  Roman  empire  perished     ...  23 

The  highest  object  of  the  critical  faculty  28 

During  a  brief  and  brilliant  period    .         .  70 

Our  last  word  on  poetry    ....  76 

When  we  speak  of  the  poetry  of  any  age  84 

For  the  actual  Shakespeare       ...  90 

Some  thirty  years  ago,  Mr.  Lang      .         .  102 

MACLEOD,  Fiona  {See  William  Shaip) 

Dedication  of  From  the  Hills  of  Dream    .  36 

Maeterlinck,  Maurice  (1862-        ) 

Our  lives  must  be  spent  seeking  our  God  25 

Maeterlinck  and  his  Art   .         .         .         .  58 


i86      INDEX    TO    AUTHORS 

Mallarm^,  Sti^phane  (1842-1898) 

The  flesh  is  sad,  alas  .         .         .         .  72 

Masefield,  John 

O  Beauty,  I  have  wandered  far         .         .  88 

Life  is  a  wild  flame 106 

Masterman,  Lucy  {See  Lucy  Lyttelton) 

Matthews,  William  (i 822-1 896) 

How  to  Open  a  New  Book       .         .         .         124 

McCarthy,  Justin  Huntly  (i860-        ) 

On  level  lines  of  woodwork  stand     .         .  59 

McChesney,  Dora  G.  (1871-         ) 

See,  but  the  urn  we  hold  ....  77 

Mill,  John  Stuart  (1806-1873) 

Dedication  to  the  memory  of  his  wife       .  13 

Moore,  T.  Sturge 

Li  what  does  the  plastic  beauty         .         .  63 

Morley,  John  (1838-        ) 

Books  outside  of  the  enchanted  realm     .  29 

Morris,  Sir  Lewis  {1833-    .'    ) 

Oh,  snows  so  pure     .         .         .         .         .  176 

MosHER,  Thomas  B.*  *  *  (1852-        ) 

"  Before  Books  and  After  Books"    .         .  3 

"  The  Vision  Splendid "    .         .         .         .  65 

"Sacred  Tilings  Never  Die  "     ...  79 

"  The  Great  Companions  "...  96 

"  In  the  Bright  Lexicon  of  Youth  "  .  .  115 
"  The  Lost  Gardens  of  the  Heart"  .  .  13S 
The  Books  I  Shall  Not  Read  Again  .         173 

Nesbit,  E.  (Mrs.  Hubert  Bland,  1858-         ) 

"  The  leaves  of  life  are  falling  one  by  one  "  14 

Newbolt,  Henry  (1862-        ) 

To  attempt  "  to  see  things  as  they  are  "  .         107 


INDEX    TO    AUTHORS      187 

Newman,  Cardinal  (1801-1890) 

Let  us  consideri  too,  how  differently  young  40 

No  YES,  Alfred  (1880-        ) 

Enough  of  dreams  !   No  longer  mock        ,         131 
Paget,  Geurgina  B. 

I  was  your  stepping-stone  .         .         .         160 

Paget,  Violet  (See  Vernon  Lee) 
Parsons,  Thomas  William  (1819-1892) 

There  is  a  city,  builded  by  no  hand  .         .         152 
Phillips,  Stephen  (1868-        ) 

My  dead  love  came  to  me,  and  said  .         162 

Phillpotts,  Eden  (1862-        ) 

For  we  writers  .         .         .         .         .         .         1 59 

A  sudden  wakin' i6i 

Quiller-Couch,  Sir  Arthur  ("Q."  1863-        ) 

Over  the  rim  of  the  Moor         .         .         .         166 

Raleigh,  Walter  (1861-        ) 

It  is  not  amid  the  bustle  of  the  live  senses  60 

While  persons  count  for  much  .         .  77 

Randell,  Wilfrid  L. 

The  man  of  business,  chancing  upon         .  68 

Reese,  Lizette  Woodworth  (1856-        ) 

In  his  old  gusty  garden  of  the  North        .         133 
When  I  consider  Life  and  its  few  years   .  154 

Renan,  Ernest  (1823-1892) 

Dedication  of  Lr/e  of  Jestis        .         .         .  27 

Rice,  Wallace  (1859-        ) 

I  should  like  very  much  to  bespeak  .         151 

Robinson,  A.  Mary  F.  (1857-        ) 

I  have  caught  but  a  glimpse      .         .         .  11 

The  whole  day  long  I  sit  and  read    .         .  41 


i88      INDEX    TO    AUTHORS 


Ross,  Robert  (1869-        ) 

In  the  glens  of  Parnassus  there  are  hidden  72 

RuNCiE,  John  (South  Africa) 

I  have  drunk  the  Sea's  good  wine    .         .  62 

RusKiN,  John  (1819-1900) 

A  book  is  essentially  not  a  talked  thing  .  44 

There  is  a  curious  type  of  us  given  in  one         134 

Sharp,  William  (1856-1906.     See  Macleod) 

When  I  speak  of  Criticism  I  have  in  mind  89 

SiEVEKiNG,  A.  Forbes  (1857-        ) 

My  dream  is  of  a  Library  .         .         .         .         158 

Source  Unknown* 

Sing  some  old  exulting  song     ...  2 

O  World!  whose  days  like  sunlit  waters  .  121 

Those  who  read  and  enjoy  the  same  books         132 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis  {1850-1894) 

But  it  is  at  night,  and  after  dinner    .         .  93 

Swinburne,  A.  C.  (1837-1909) 

Along  these  low  pleached  lanes,       .         •  34 

Symons,  Arthur  (1865-        ) 

A  little  hand  is  knocking  at  my  heart  .  47 

The  flesh  is  sad,  alas  (Mallarme)        .  .  72 

O  little  waking  hour  of  life        .         .  .  163 

Taylor,  Rachel  Annand 

If  all  the  dream-like  things  are  vain  .  21 

Oh  !  lose  the  winter  from  thine  heart  .  92 

Taylor,  Viola 

Where  the  Tree  of  Life  is  blooming  .  7 

I 'm  going  softly  all  my  years    .         .  .  16 

Yea  —  we  have  thought  of  royal  robes  .  24 

This  is  the  book  of  Sydney  Pickering  .  73 

When  in  your  distant  book-lined  room  .  loi 


INDEX    TO    AUTHORS      189 

Thomas,  Edith  M.  (1854-        ) 

This  from  that  soul  incorrupt  .  .  .  129 
Thoreau,  Henry  D.  (1817-1862) 

No  wonder  that  Alexander        ...  53 

Todhunter,  John  (1839-        ) 

Man  walks  the  earth  .  .  .  .  124 
Traubel,  Horace  (1858-        ) 

Like  to  the  leaf  that  falls  .         .         .         .         156 

Tynan,  Katharine  (.9^1?  Hinkson) 

Upson,  Arthur  (1877-1908) 

Fair  crystal  cups  are  dug  ....  56 

In  an  old  book  at  even  as  I  read      .         .  120 

Slantwise  one  long  starbeam  finds    .         .  125 

Watson,  Rosamund  Marriott  (1863-1911) 

Where  be  they  that  once  would  sing         .         114 

Watts-Dunton,  Theodore  (1832-        ) 
The  Three  Fausts : 

I.   The  Music  of  Hell  .         .         .         122 

II.   The  Music  of  Earth        .         .         .         122 
III.   The  Music  of  Heaven     .         .         .         123 
Whistler,  J.  A.  McNeill  (1834-1903) 

False  again,  the  fabled  link       ...  48 

Whitman,  Walt  (1819-1892) 

Without  doubt,  some  of  the  richest .         .  146 

For  us,  along  the  great  highways  of  time  151 

Wilde,  Oscar  (1856-1900) 

I  can  write  no  stately  proem     ...  60 

If  w^e  grow  tired  of  an  antique  time          .  118 

It  is  through  Art,  and  through  Art  only  .  144 

Wilkinson,  James  J.  G.  (1812-1899) 

Once  upon  a  time  all  books       ...  35 


192      INDEX    TO    AUTHORS 


Williams,  Iolo  Aneurin 

When  sleep  is  with  the  lily 

Wordsworth,  Dorothy  {1804-1847) 
Yes,  do  you  send  me  a  book 

Yeats,  William  Butler  (1865-        ) 
Three  types  of  men  have  made 


84 

83 

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